Lotte Chemical advances Wilton PET project

Wilton, UK - Lotte Chemical UK Ltd (LCUK) has progressed its project to expand PET (polyethylene terephthalate) production at its Wilton, UK site by filing a ‘hazardous substances consent” application at Redcar & Cleveland council.

LCUK has already gained Regional Growth Fund support for the project to build a 200ktpa plant at the former ICI site, near Middlesbrough in north east England.

Sited alongside an existing 150 ktpa PET plant (M5), the new unit is due on line in Q3/4 2013. It will enable LCUK to move into a wider range of PET products including resins incorporating post-consumer recycled PET.

Uhde Inventa-Fischer is to build a plant for the production of PET: supplying the basic and detail engineering of plant components, supervising construction and commissioning the plant. Operating personnel are also to be trained by the German engineering group.

ThyssenKrupp Uhde and Uhde India are to provide the civil and steel structure engineering, while Uhde Inventa-Fischer’s ‘melt-To-resin’ (MTR) technology will be applied for the production.

The MTR process is based on the two-reactor high-viscosity technology developed by Uhde Inventa-Fischer and uses the patented reactor designs to ensure production of the required high melt viscosity on a sustained basis.

The design is claimed to be more cost efficient and less costly than traditional two-stage PET production units, which involve a continuous polymerisation plant (CP) with four reactors and a solid-state polymerisation plant.

LCUK can also produce 500ktpa of raw material, pure terephthalic acid (PTA), at its site. It will supply PTA feedstock to the new plant directly via pipeline.