Feb 13 2007
In mid-January of 2007, BASF started the construction of a new plant for the production of the base material DHDPS in Ludwigshafen, Germany. The plant will have an annual production capacity of 6000 metric tons and is expected to go on line in mid-2008. DHDPS (dihydroxy diphenyl sulfone) is a feedstock for the manufacture of the high-performance plastic Ultrason® E (polyether sulfone: PES) that BASF has been producing in Ludwigshafen since the early 1990s.
“The global business with Ultrason has been extremely successful. The growth rates have been between 20 and 30 percent for a number of years now. This is why the construction of the DHDPS plant is an important investment, serving to improve backward integration and helping us to enhance the value-added chain,” explains Dr. Harald Lauke, head of BASF’s Performance Polymers Operating Division.
Due to the high demand, the production capacity of the Ultrason plant in Ludwigshafen will be increased from the current 6000 to 12,000 metric tons per year. Therefore, the need for DHDPS is so large that it pays off for BASF to invest in its own DHDPS plant. The entire quantity of the material made in this new plant will be employed to make the plastic. Up until now, BASF had been purchasing the DHDPS needed for the manufacture of Ultrason from outside sources.
New process for the production of DHDPS
DHDPS is produced by means of a new, complex process developed by BASF itself. Implementing the research findings in a large-scale plant as well as obtaining the requisite high-quality DHDPS for further processing into Ultrason posed a great challenge to the researchers. Assistance for the plastics experts came from BASF’s integrated network, the “Verbund”: “Our colleagues from Leather Chemicals have extensive know-how when it comes to the production of DHDPS, which has been made so far in a small plant and in a different grade for a completely different application purpose, namely, for tanning leather. We collaborated with them to transfer the new process to an industrial-scale plant,” explains Matthias Dietrich, head of BASF’s Ultrason® global business unit.
Plastics bearing the brand name Ultrason® are employed, for instance, for the reflectors of automobile headlights, in the coolant and oil circulation systems of engines, in numerous electrical applications as well as in aeronautics. These plastics lend themselves very well for use at high temperatures of up to 220°C [428°F].