I N T E R N A T I O N A L

Condea Set to Start Up Alfol Alcohols Plant Soft detergents and plasticizers will be the major markets for the new plant's output

Condea Petrochemie, G.m.b.H., plans to start operating its new Alfol alco­hols plant at Brunsbuettelkoog, West Germany, within the next few weeks. The plant, located on the lower Elbe River near its entrance to the North Sea, has a design capacity of 100 mil­lion pounds a year.

The plant will make Alfol straight-chain alcohols in the C4 through C20

range from ethylene and other raw

materials. Intended customers are producers of plasticizers and surface-active agents throughout Europe. The start-up will mark the first large-scale production of synthetic straight-chain alcohols in Europe.

Condea, headquartered at Ham­burg, West Germany, is a 50/50 ven­ture of Continental Oil Co. and Deutsche Erdol, A.G. (DEA). It was formed in 1961 specifically to produce

PLANT. First large-scale production of synthetic straight chain alcohols in Europe will begin this month when Condea starts up its plant at Bruns­buettelkoog, West Germany. View shows plant's ethylene section

and market Alfol alcohols in Europe. "But," says J. R. D. Cowell, co-man­ager of the firm along with Dr. Klaus Scharpenberg, "we could always do more things and, indeed, eventually hope to do so."

The new plant is the second Alfol alcohols plant for Conoco. In 1962, the company started to operate an Alfol alcohols plant at Lake Charles, La. That plant also has a capacity of 100 million pounds a year.

Where Condea's products will be used depends on their carbon range. The C4 to C10 range generally serves as base stock for plasticizers. The C12 to C1 8 range, on the other hand, is better suited to detergent uses when sulfated or ethoxylated.

Condea can make any single cut plus a number of "appropriate mix­tures." By varying process conditions, the distribution curve can be shifted up or down the C-number range, per­mitting a shift in product mix to meet changing market demand, Dr. Kurt Th. Schotte, Condea's technical serv­ice manager, points out.

Market Outlook. The market out­look for Alfol alcohols in Europe is still an open question. Condea has been selling in Europe some Alfol al­cohols imported from Conoco's Lake Charles plant. Based on reaction so far, Mr. Cowell, a hale and bluff Scotsman, is optimistic over prospects.

Roughly half of Condea's produc­tion will go into detergents, half into plasticizers, Mr. Cowell believes. "Our product is in direct competition with natural fatty alcohols rather than with the new straight-chain benzene sulfonates," Mr. Cowell says. (The straight-chain benzene sulfonates will be produced by Chemische Werke Huels and Rheinpreussen, a DEA sub­sidiary, among others. ) "We feel that our ethylene raw material base gives us an advantage in the long run over the man tied to vegetable material," he adds.

Dr. Schotte notes, however, that West Germany's detergent law, in effect, favors use of straight-chain al­cohols. The law, which comes into force this October, outlaws detergents, such as tetrapropylene benzene sul­fonate, that aren't at least 80% biode­gradable.

68 C&EN MAY 4, 1964

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Dr. Kurt Schotte Product mix can shift to meet demand

Detergent laws in other European countries could add still more pressure to make biologically soft detergents. France and Switzerland will probably enact such laws eventually. Italy doesn't seem to face a detergent prob­lem now, but burgeoning industrial areas, especially in the North, may one day be afflicted with a foam prob­lem. In fact, a uniform law for the entire European Economic Commu­nity is a definite possibility.

Price. One question that has been raised about fatty alcohols is price. Some European chemical firms con­tacted by C&EN believe that fatty al­cohols are still too costly. For ex­ample, a spokesman for a large Italian producer of alkylbenzene sulfonate says, "The alcohols will not be able to fight straight-chain dodecylbenzene for the production of biologically soft detergents for five to six years. The alcohols will go only for special deter­gents."

Nevertheless, although reluctant to discuss price or process economics, Mr. Cowell is confident that Condea will be able to pick up a share of the European detergent market. His op­timism seems well founded.

For the long-term detergent out­look, 100% biodegradable material seems to be favored. The feeling in some West German circles is that the detergent law will become progres­sively more severe. Biodegradability requirements will be raised to 100% and a toxicity clause will be added, they believe.

Enticing. The European detergent market is an increasingly enticing one. In West Germany, for example, total production of detergent raw materials last year was about 164,000 metric tons (washing active agent), about

J. R. D. Cowell Optimistic over market prospects

12% more than 1962. Raw material producers converted about 33,000 metric tons of this amount into fin­ished detergent. The remaining 131,-000 metric tons were sold to proces­sors. Since 1956, the average annual increase in production has been about 137c

It's hard to pin down, but C&EN es­timates that 60 to 80% of total deter­gent raw material production in West Germany is of the ABS type; the re­mainder includes fatty alcohol sul­fates, fatty alcohol polyglycol ethers, and ethoxylated alkyl phenols.

No matter what Alfol alcohols' long-term prospects are, the initial market will be for liquid detergents such as those used in shampoos, textile auxil­iaries, and dishwashing preparations. Mono- and dialkyl-sulfosuccinates, made from Alfol alcohols and maleic anhydride, are mild to the skin.

Plasticizers also represent an inter­esting market. Mr. Cowell estimates that at least 150,000 metric tons of plasticizers were consumed in Europe last year. He figures that 40,000 to 50,000 metric tons were used in the United Kingdom, possibly 40,000 metric tons in West Germany, and 30,000 metric tons in France. Alfol alcohols will be competing mainly with 2-ethyl hexanol and oxo alcohols in the plasticizer field.

Although Condea is based in West Germany, Mr. Cowell emphasizes that the firm is aiming its products at the entire European market. "It's ridicu­lous to look at a single country any­more," he explains. "Any plant going up today can, within its lifetime, count on zero tariffs within the EEC. Oper­ators of any large-scale plant must look outside their natural boundaries," he adds.

70 C & E N M A Y 4, 1964

Process. Condea's Alfol alcohols process is based on one developed by Prof. Karl Ziegler. Conoco developed the process for commercial use.

In the process, Conoco reacts ethyl­ene with hydrogen and aluminum to form aluminum triethyl. This is actu­ally a two-step reaction. First, alu­minum, hydrogen, make-up solvent, and recycle aluminum triethyl are re­acted under pressure to give diethyl aluminum hydride. The diethyl alu­minum hydride then reacts with ethylene under pressure to yield alu­minum triethyl.

Next, in the so-called "growth re­action," aluminum triethyl reacts with more ethylene at high pressure to form higher aluminum alkyls. Dis­tribution of these higher-molecular-weight products follows a Poisson distribution. Adjusting growth reac­tion conditions shifts the product mix. Higher temperatures increase the re­action rate, for example. Conoco nor­mally stays below 265° F. to curb cracking.

In the next step, Conoco oxidizes the aluminum alkyls with air to form aluminum alkoxides. The alkoxides are then hydrolyzed to form a mixture of straight-chain primary alcohols.

At the Lake Charles plant, sulfuric acid is used in the hydrolysis step, forming aluminum sulfate as a by­product. However, in West Ger­many, Condea faced a situation where full capacity operation would have produced an amount of aluminum sul­fate equal to about 60% of the current German market.

To avoid producing more than half of Germany's aluminum sulfate re­quirements, Condea turned to neutral hydrolysis with water. The by-prod­uct is a very pure aluminum hydrox­ide. At full capacity, the Condea plant will produce about 6500 metric tons a year of aluminum hydroxide. Condea is trying to develop a market for the hydroxide with Gebr. Giulini, G.m.b.H., Ludwigshafen, a producer of various alumina and phosphorus compounds and fine chemicals.

Condea has built all units of its Brunsbuettelkoog plant for full-capac­ity operation except the growth re­actor, which is presently half size. Contractor for the plant was Edeleanu, G.m.b.H., Frankfurt.

Ethylene for the plant will be shipped by pipeline from DEA's new 60,000 metric-ton-a-year ethylene plant at Heide. DEA built this unit to supply Condea.

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