MOSCOW (MRC) -- Air Products has started operating a new air separation unit (ASU) in Chandler, Arizona, supplying gaseous nitrogen and high-purity oxygen under long-term contracts mainly to electronics industry and other customers, according to Chemweek.
The ASU is the sixth owned and operated by Air Products at the plant site in Chandler, it says.
The new unit is capable of producing over 2 million standard cubic feet/hour of nitrogen and over 20,000 standard cubic feet/hour of oxygen. Air Products says the location at Chandler, which it has operated since 1981, has potential for future capacity expansions. The company also operates two nitrogen pipelines connecting the facility to semiconductor manufacturers and other customers in the area.
The latest ASU project “also added a significant amount of additional low-pressure liquid nitrogen storage to maintain the reliability model at the site, as well as high purity oxygen storage,” it says.
As MRC reported earlier, in January 2021, Air Products signed a long-term gas supply contract with Shandong Binhua New Material Co., Ltd. (Binhua), a subsidiary of Befar Group, which is a leading petroleum and chemical enterprise in China, to support Binhua’s flagship chemical project located in the Beihai Economic Development Zone of Binzhou City, Shandong Province, China.
Under the contract, Air Products will build, own and operate several onsite gas production facilities in the Binzhou Port-centered Chemical Industry Park in phases, including an energy-efficient air separation unit (ASU), to meet Binhua’s gaseous oxygen and nitrogen demand. The ASU will also provide liquid products to other customers in the park and the growing merchant market in Shandong Province. All facilities will be fully operational in 2022.
We remind that China's Shandong Befar resumed production at its No. 1 an 3 propylene oxide lines in Binzhou City (Binzhou, Shandong Province, China) on June 28, 2020, following a scheduled maintenance. The turnaround at these lines with a total capacity of 200,000 mt/year of propylene oxide began on June 14, 2020.
Propylene is the main feedstock for the production of polypropylene (PP).
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, PP shipments to the Russian market reached 141,870 tonnes in January 2021 versus 123,520 tonnes a year earlier. Supply of homopolymer PP and PP block copolymers increased.
Air Products has been operating in China since 1987 and was one of the first multinational industrial gases corporations to invest in the country. With nearly 90 operating entities, over 200 production facilities and more than 4,000 employees, the company has already established a strong market position across China and serves a broad range of industries. In Shandong Province, Air Products has built a strong presence and supply network since its first investment in 1995, comprising several operating entities, production facilities, hydrogen fueling stations and engineering design capability.
MRC