Sasol details petrochemical project plans

Sasol Ltd., Johannesburg, announced a plan to build five new plants to expand its solvents capacity, at a combined cost of more than 1.5 billion rand ($250 million).

Sasol said the investments are part of a 14 billion rand, 5-year capital expansion program, which follows an investment of 7.5 billion rand over the past 3 years.

The new projects are: an 825 million rand normal-butanol plant; a 270 million rand ethyl acetate plant; a 240 million rand hexene plant; a 140 million rand high-purity ethanol plant; and a 29 million rand ethanol dehydration plant.

Project details

The normal-butanol plant will be based on technology licensed from Mitsubishi Chemical Corp., which is soon to begin a basic engineering study for the proposed plant with Sasol. The plant is expected to be built at Secunda, South Africa, and to have a capacity of 150,000 metric tons/year. It is slated for start-up by mid-2001.

The 50,000 ton/year ethyl acetate plant will be built at Secunda, with commissioning due by mid-2000. It will use ethanol produced by Sasol as feedstock.

The plant will be operated by Sasol Solvents, which currently sells 450,000 tons/year of solvents and aims to boost output capacity by 280,000 tons/year over the next 5 years.

Sasol sees a growing market for ethyl acetate as a solvent in paints and coatings, where it is being used to replace hazardous aromatic solvents, which cause concerns over air pollution.

The 70,000 ton/year hexene plant will be built at Secunda and will be the third at the complex. Engineering is nearly complete and commissioning is expected by June 2000.

Sasol already has capacity to produce 120,000 tons/year of hexene. The new unit will be an upgraded version of the two in operation at Secunda and will enable more cost-effective hexene recovery.

The high-purity ethanol plant, also to be built at Secunda, will have capacity to produce 85,000 tons/year of ethanol with a minimum purity of 99.99%. Basic engineering began in July 1998, and completion is slated for October 1999.

Sasol now has capacity to produce 35,000 tons/year of ethanol at its Sasolburg plant.

Sasol said it has further projects valued at a combined 2 billion rand at an advanced stage of planning. These include acetates, acrylates, and detergent alcohols plants.