Wo Covestro is researching the future, electronic devices such as smartphones or even remote control keys are banned for cars. Finally, highly flammable gases can arise in the laboratories and from the systems in the chemical park in Leverkusen. In a building complex belonging to the plastics company, around 140 employees work on technology for the circular economy and a new facility extends over the fourth and fifth floors, on which the DAX group has high hopes.
In a globally unique pilot project, Covestro is trying to produce its important precursor aniline on a plant basis. It's tiny compared to real production facilities, but even in this early testing phase, more than 600 kilometers of pipes stretch around 50 machines to produce the material the company needs to make a product called MDI. This in turn makes foam, which is found in mattresses or upholstered furniture or is also used for building insulation.
6 million tons of aniline are produced in the world every year, with annual growth of around 3 to 5 percent. Covestro produces one million tons of it in its plants in Europe, Asia and America. So far this has only worked with fossil raw materials, with naphtha and benzene, i.e. based on petroleum.
Millions invested at home
The company has now invested a “significant single-digit million amount,” as Covestro Chief Technology Officer Thorsten Dreier said, without specifying, in its pilot plant at its home location. There are already ten years of research behind it, which have resulted, among other things, in the so-called Catalysis Center CAT, a joint research facility between RWTH Aachen and Covestro. Research into bio-based aniline has been funded by the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture for several years.
The University of Stuttgart is also involved in Covestro’s pilot project. Using a tailor-made microorganism, the researchers have developed a process in which industrial sugar obtained from plants is fermented into an intermediate product, which Covestro then processes further using chemical catalysis. Not only is the lack of fossil materials as a basis supposed to be kinder to the environment, lower temperatures or pressures are also sometimes required in the production of the intermediate product.
In the pilot plant, Covestro is now testing whether production from laboratory conditions can be transferred to production in three-shift operation. The next step would be a demonstration plant to produce marketable products and then later a large-scale industrial plant like the one that produces aniline for Covestro today at locations like Krefeld-Uerdingen. Since it is a completely different process, it would not be worthwhile to convert existing systems – the test is now intended to prove the marketability of the bio-based product. It will probably be years before aniline can actually be produced on a large scale.
But where does large-scale production take place?
Covestro deliberately built the pilot plant at its home location because the knowledge is available here and the research collaborations are established. At least these location conditions are still worth a pound for German industry. But the truth is that it is anything but certain whether a large plant would also be built in Germany. “We need an environment in which we can earn money and pay for research here,” said technology director Dreier at the inauguration of the facility on Tuesday.
This was primarily an announcement to the North Rhine-Westphalian Economics Minister Mona Neubaur (Greens), who also looked at the pilot project. Energy prices in this country are three to four times higher than in the United States. In addition to competitive energy prices, the biggest concern for the chemical industry is the slow approval process. Neubaur is of course aware of the importance of the chemical industry as the third largest German industrial sector, and not just for the most populous federal state. Companies like Covestro decided every day whether they would stay or leave. And it is the task of politicians to create the framework conditions for Germany to remain an industrial location, said the Green politician.
Even if there is space in the chemical park for large-scale production, production director Dreier did not want to be pinned down by the deputy prime minister to set it up in Leverkusen as well. In any case, many research questions still need to be clarified and first of all it needs to be checked whether the aniline can actually be produced competitively, said the production director in an interview with the FAZ
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