TVK invests in butadiene recovery

ERJ staff report (EPN)

Tiszaújváros, Hungary – Hungarian polymer producer Tisza Chemical Group (TVK) is investing €120m to construct a 130 000 tonnes per annum butadiene recovery plant in northern Hungary, Richard Higgs reported for European Plastics News.

The company, part of Hungary’s MOL oil and gas group, has opted to produce the synthetic rubbers intermediate because butadiene is in “significantly” higher demand and more profitable than its polyolefin products, it said.

A foundation stone laying ceremony for the new plant was staged at TVK’s main Hungarian petrochemicals complex in Tiszaújváros on 15 October in the presence of Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.

“Our goal is to continually expand our product slate and operations in Hungary through innovation and various projects.

“This new project thus simultaneously has great significance for the national economy as well as for maintaining MOL Group’s competitiveness,” commented MOL’s chairman and CEO Zsolt Hernádi.

Plant construction has now begun and pilot operations are due to commence at the beginning of 2015. The butadiene plant, which will create 32 new jobs, is scheduled to be commissioned in the second quarter of 2015, according to TVK.

The project will be implemented in two phases, the first of which will see the construction of a C4/C5 hydrocarbon compounds separator unit which will provide feedstock for butadiene recovery. These ethylene by-products were previously burned to generate energy in the olefin plant.

A second stage will involve building the recovery plant which will produce 1,3 butadiene for use in the manufacture of synthetic rubber.

“The profitability of and demand for butadiene is significantly higher and better balanced than for the polymers produced to date by TVK,” stated the company. The plant will improve TVK’s and therefore MOL Group’s profitability in Hungary by several billion (Hungarian) forints (several million euros) per annum, it added.