Partners start electric ethylene cracking system

A consortium of the chemical makers Sabic and BASF and the engineering and industrial gas firm Linde has completed a plant in Ludwigshafen, Germany, that will demonstrate electric furnace technology for making ethylene, according to Bob Maughon, Sabic's chief technology officer, who spoke at the World Petrochemical Conference in Houston on March 19. The plant will test two designs: one that uses electricity to heat feedstocks directly and another that will apply heat to the reactor walls. The companies hope electric furnaces will reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 90% versus conventional hydrocarbon-heated furnaces. The facility, currently being commissioned, is "not a lab reactor," Maughon said. It will have the capacity to process 100 metric tons (t) of feedstock per day using 6 MW of power to produce 20,000 t of olefins annually. The partners aim to scale the process up tenfold in a commercial reactor system that Linde would license.