BP fluid bed VAM reactor cuts costs by 30%

16 November 1998 17:13  [Source: ICIS news]

LONDON (CNI)--UK oil and chemicals giant BP unveiled a fluidised bed reactor system called Leap on Monday that it said can reduce capital costs in manufacturing vinyl acetate monomer (VAM) by 30%.

The Leap system is based on a new fluidised bed reactor and catalyst design that uses traditional raw materials of acetic acid, ethylene and oxygen and can be used to upgrade existing plant. The company claimed the fluid bed process is the most significant breakthrough in VAM manufacturing in three decades. BP has developed the technology with the help of the Warrensville Research Centre in the US and has had a pilot plant in operation in Hull since 1997.

BP is to build 250 000 tonne/year of VAM capacity at its Hull, England using the Leap process. The company said that introducing the more cost effective process was part of a drive to increase market share and rationalise costs. The new plant is BP's first VAM plant at Hull and is due onstream in late 2000 and its output will replace that from existing facilities at Baglan Bay, Wales, and the supplies from EniChem's Porto Marghera plant, Italy, when the contract ends the same year.

The VAM plant is part of an investment of around £200m ($333m) that BP is making in Hull and the associated ethylene pipeline that will tie the site into the line linking Teesside and Grangemouth, Scotland.

The investment will also see Hull receive another new process technology - direct addition - which will take ethylene and acetic acid to make ethyl acetate in a 220 000 tonne/year plant from 2001. The plant will be the first commercial use of the BP proprietary technology. The site presently produces ethyl acetate by the esterification of ethanol with acetic acid.

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Author: Patrick Reynolds
+44 208 652 3214

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