At the Ludwigshafen Verbund site, BASF has started the operations with the new plant for the intermediate 2-mercaptoethanol.
BASF has recently announced that it has replaced its plant for the production of the intermediate 2-mercaptoethanol (2-ME) at the Ludwigshafen Verbund site. The company has also modernised the production of chloroformates and acid chlorides in the same facility.
The new plant started the operations at the end of 2021 and, after some months of trials, it has replaced the previous plant after more than forty years of operations. The new one is fully integrated into BASF’s production and has the same capacity (more than 10,000 metric tons of 2-ME per year).
“The new plant will enable us to supply our customers all over the world with 2-mercaptoethanol even more reliably. Our global logistics network, which our customers can further rely on, also contributes to this,” stated Frank Stein, the head of the Regional Business Unit Europe of the Intermediates division at BASF.
The intermediate 2-ME is used in the production of plastics, crop protection products, oilfield chemicals (Basocorr® ME) and coatings.