BP Chemicals Ltd. has unveiled a new process for manufacturing vinyl acetate monomer (VAM), an intermediate petrochemical used to make emulsions and packaging films.
BP claims the new process to be one of the most significant developments in the field in more than 30 years.
The new process will see first application in a $100 million VAM plant it is building at Hull, England, with capacity of 250,000 metric tons/year and start-up slated for yearend 2000 (see related story, this page).
The new process, called Leap, uses the same raw materials-acetic acid, ethylene, and oxygen-as conventional VAM processes and can be retrofitted and debottlenecked.
"The new fluid-bed reaction process," said BP, "based on a radical new reactor and catalyst design, rather than the traditional fixed-bed system, offers large capital cost savings-of the order of 30%. This is because the new reactor design achieves very high production rates and can be made relatively smaller.
"This, combined with comprehensive process reengineering, allows substantial downsizing throughout the plant."
A BP official told OGJ the firm does not plan to license the process initially, but that it would be made available "in due course."
The company has no plans to use the process in its other VAM plants worldwide, because they are mostly fairly new-apart from Baglan Bay in South Wales, slated for closure-and it will be some time before they are ready for upgrading.
The official said other VAM manufacturers' plants around the world are "getting long in the tooth" and are potential candidates for upgrading.
For the Hull plant, BP has appointed U.K. Construction & Engineering Ltd., London, for mechanical work; James Scott Ltd., London, for electrical work and instrumentation; Balfour Beatty Construction Ltd., London, for civil works; and Foster Wheeler Energy Ltd., Reading, for engineering work.
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