Davy Process Technology Licenses Octanol Process To Sasol

London and Midland, MI - Davy Process Technology Limited in cooperation with Union Carbide Corporation, a subsidiary of The Dow Chemical Company, has licensed to Sasol Chemical Industries Ltd. a process for converting heptene to 1-octanol. The process, employing low pressure hydroformylation technology, will be incorporated in a novel scheme by which a heptene feedstock, separated from olefinic cuts and available from Sasol Synthetic Fuels (Pty) Ltd., will be converted to 1-octene.

The 1-octene plant is being built for Sasol Olefins & Surfactants at Sasol's Secunda complex and will be the third and largest of three 1-octene trains at that location, but the first to employ a hydroformylation step. The first two trains, already in operation, use direct extraction of 1-octene from olefinic cuts. The latest train will produce 100,000 metric tons of 1-octene, and is scheduled to go into operation during the second half of 2007.

1-octene is used as a chemical intermediate in the production of polymers such as polyethylene, fatty acids, plasticizer alcohols and lubrication oil additives.

Davy Process Technology has completed the basic design of the octanol section at its London office, and engineering, procurement and construction is being carried out by the technology group Linde AG. This will be the second alcohols facility Sasol has built that employs Low Pressure Oxo technology; the first is a 120,000 metric tons per year C12 to C15 higher alcohols plant that went into operation in 2002.

That plant is fed with C11 to C15 olefinic cuts. In both cases, the technology was developed and tailored to Sasol's requirements by Davy Process Technology at its Technology Centre in Stockton-on-Tees, U.K.

SOURCE: Davy Process Technology