World’s largest CO2 purification plant at EG facility

Chemicals maker Sabic, which recently released its Sustainability Report 2015, entitled Enabling Tomorrow’s Solutions, says its CO2 purification plant that opened last year at United, a Sabic affiliate in Saudi Arabia, boosts the company’s overall operational efficiency. The new facility can capture and purify up to 500,000 tonnes of CO2 from the production of ethylene glycol every year, it says.

“This impressive project has become a standard bearer for sustainable, efficient and environmentally conscious development,” Awadh Al-Maker, Executive Vice President for Technology and Innovation at Sabic. “The project shows how technology can reduce emissions, convert waste CO2 into valuable products, and increase operational efficiency, providing SABIC with both short- and long-term gains.”

The purified CO2 is channelled through a network to other Sabic affiliates, where it is used in the production of useful products, such as urea for agricultural nutrients, liquefied CO2for the food and drink industry, and methanol, a building block for many other chemicals that we use daily.

Sabic also says it continued progress to meet ambitious goals in resource and energy efficiency throughout its global operations: reducing energy consumption, greenhouse gas (GHG), and water intensities by 25%, and material loss intensity by 50% from levels in 2010 by 2025.

Globally, it increased utilisation of CO2 as a feedstock to 3.3 million tonnes, helping to reduce material loss intensity by 29% since 2010. Over the same period, GHG emissions intensity has decreased by 7.8%, energy intensity by 8.1%, water intensity by 11%.