SearchINVENTING AND IMPROVING PROCESSES
At SABIC, innovation and sustainability go hand in hand – with innovation fueling sustainability, and sustainability fueling business performance. This year, we continued to implement a number of new technologies that maximized productivity and increased process efficiency.
More efficient glycol processes
We are on track with a program to implement highly selective catalysts for glycol plants. When we complete the roll-out by 2020, it will have reduced SABIC’s annual greenhouse-gas emissions by about 450,000 metric tons of CO2.
Higher resin yields at lower costs
In 2018, our engineers re-imagined the making of a specialty monomer used in the ULTEMTM polyetherimide resin manufacturing process. Not only will this innovation generate an additional US$30 million in revenue per year, it will also use at least 8 percent less energy, generating fewer greenhouse-gas emissions.
A novel technology to clear out manufacturing bottlenecks
When engineers faced production bottlenecks at our Mt. Vernon, Indiana, and Burkville, Alabama, polycarbonate plants as a result of hydrogen sulfide increases in supplies of carbon monoxide, they sought out new ways to increase production, bringing the plants back up to peak performance while saving up to $10 million per year in operating costs.
Site selected for COTC Complex
SABIC and Saudi Aramco announced the selection of Yanbu on the west coast of Saudi Arabia as the site to develop an integrated, industrial Crude-Oil-to-Chemicals (COTC) Complex.
Chemical recycling of plastic waste into feedstock for polymers production
SABIC signed a memorandum of understanding with UK-based PLASTIC ENERGY to build a first commercial plant in the Netherlands to establish a value chain from plastic waste to cracker feedstock.