Bayer MaterialScience to build plant for polymer polyols using new technology

Our Corporate Bureau
22 June 2007

Mumbai: Bayer MaterialScience AG in cooperation with Bayer Technology Services GmbH has developed an innovative technology for the manufacture of polymer-filled polyether polyols that delivers significantly better products than the conventional process.

The new technology has already been successfully tested on a commercial-scale service laboratory. It is to be used on a world scale for the first time in a PMPO production facility with an annual capacity of 60,000 tonnes.

The plant is due to be commissioned at the end of 2008 and is likely to be constructed either in Dormagen, Germany, or in Antwerp, Belgium. At both sites, Bayer MaterialScience already manufactures polyether polyols, one of the basic components required to produce polymer polyols.

This new production process keeps the amounts of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in the end product at very low levels that were impossible to achieve with the technologies used to date. The much lower operating temperature at the processing stage of the continuous operation means that the PMPOs are only very slightly discolored.

In addition to the improved product properties, Bayer MaterialScience expects a 25 per cent reduction of investment costs for construction work and a decrease in energy consumption when operating production facilities by a similar percentage rate.