BASF (Ludwigshafen, Germany; www.basf.com) announced this week that its catalyst division will begin a new round of capital investment projects to increase production capacity for copper and copper-chrome catalysts.
These investments are aimed at improving catalyst manufacturing efficiency to meet increased global demand, the company says. They follow an earlier round of process improvement and capacity enhancement projects for the copper-chrome product line that were completed earlier this year.
BASF produces a wide variety of base-metal catalysts, which are primarily used in petrochemical and oleochemical processing. Typical catalyst applications include: guard beds; hydrogenation processes, such as solvent and gasoline dearomatization; dehydrogenation processes; monomer production; and manufacturing of specialty and detergent alcohols.