The Dow Chemical Company (Midland, Mich.; www.dow.com) today announced that MEGlobal, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Equate Petrochemical Co., has undertaken a competitive evaluation process and has selected Dow Meteor ethylene oxide/ethylene glycol (EO/EG) process technology and Meteor EO-Retro catalyst to construct its monoethylene glycol (MEG) production facility on the U.S. Gulf Coast — its first manufacturing unit in the U.S.
Dow’s Meteor technology is said to be the industry leading, low capital technology for world-scale EO/EG manufacturing facilities. It combines a high activity and high selectivity catalyst with a streamlined process design that results in lower capital and energy cost, high raw material efficiency, excellent operational reliability, and inherent safety and environmental features.
To date, Dow has licensed Meteor technology for plants around the world with capacities to produce approximately 4.5 million metric tons (m.t.) per year of ethylene oxide equivalents.
Plans to construct the new 700,000 m.t./yr MEG production facility were previously announced in March 2016. The unit is expected to come online in mid-2019. It will be adjacent to Dow’s Oyster Creek site in Freeport, Texas.