South Africa's Sasol Ltd. is to build an ethyl acetate plant based on a new alcohol-to-ester process developed by Kvaerner Process Technology, a unit of Kvaerner AS, Oslo.
Kvaerner said Sasol Chemical Industries is to build a 50,000 metric ton/year ethyl acetate plant at its Secunda complex near Johannesburg that incorporates a patented process that requires an ethanol feedstock.
Start-up is scheduled for mid-2000.
This first license was signed after a 2-year development program at Kvaerner's Stockton-on-Tees, U.K., technology center, utilizing the engineering firm's experience with dehydrogenation processes.Kvaerner described it as "a novel refining system (that) enables the production of ethyl acetate with a minimum purity of 99.8%, using what is in many countries a low-cost, renewable feedstock. There are plans to extend the technology to other alcohols in the near future."
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