MOSCOW (MRC) -- Kunststoffwerk AG Buchs, a subsidiary of Wiha Werkzeuge GmbH, is the first BASF customer to process and use the engineering plastic Ultramid B3EG6 MB for serial production of its Longlife brand of meter rules, as per BASF's press release.
The polyamide used is one of the first BASF products to be produced and marketed on the basis of the mass balance approach. The "MB" material is derived from bio-based feedstock and thus helps to save fossil raw materials and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
According to the mass balance approach certified by TUV SUD, 100% of the fossil raw materials needed to make Ultramid B3EG6 MB are replaced with renewable raw materials at the beginning of the production process. The abbreviation MB indicates the calculation via the mass balance approach. The certified MB plastic is identical to its fossil counterpart in terms of formulation and quality, and is already available in commercial quantities.
The mass balance approach is comparable to feeding "green" electricity into the power grid. It offers a way to utilize renewable raw materials in BASF’s existing system of integrated production known as Verbund. Under the mass balance approach, biomass - for instance, in the form of biogas or bio-naphtha from certified sustainable production - is used as a feedstock in place of fossil resources at the beginning of the value chain and is subsequently allocated to individual products in a defined manner.
The mass balance approach employed by BASF was developed jointly with TUV SUD and certified for the BASF production facilities in Ludwigshafen, Antwerp and Schwarzheide. Kunststoffwerk AG Buchs has also been certified by TUV SUD regarding use of Ultramid B3EG6 MB: This requires an annual review of the entire value chain all the way to the end product on the basis of high quality standards.
As MRC informed earlier, in May 2014, BASF offered high performance Ultramid (polyamide), which is derived from renewable raw materials with certified biomass. The share of renewable raw materials in the sales product is then indicated in the respective quantity. A third-party certification confirms to customers that BASF has used the required quantities of renewable raw materials which the customer has ordered in the value chain.
Besides, BASF is building a new Ultramid polymerization plant with a capacity of 100,000 metric tons per year in Shanghai, China. The new plant is planned to start up in 2015.
BASF operates Ultramid polymerization plants in Ludwigshafen, Germany; Antwerp, Belgium; Freeport, Texas and Sao Paulo, Brazil. The production of polyamide for film, textile and carpet fiber as well as for engineering plastics applications is integrated into BASF’s global Verbund structure with polyamide intermediates (i.e. adipic acid, anolon, caprolactam), chemical raw materials (i.e. ammonia, cyclohexane, sulfuric acid), energy, by-product recovery, logistics and other services.
MRC