Praxair's US$400 mln hydrogen recovery and processing plant at Freeport to benefit Dow

06-Feb-17

Dow Chemical Co.'s $6 billion Gulf Coast expansion - mostly in Freeport and Lake Jackson - is getting environmentally friendlier, thanks to a neighboring plant completed last week by the Connecticut company Praxair. Praxair, a leading producer of industrial gases such as acetylene, helium and neon, said its plant will capture emissions from Dow's huge Freeport campus and convert the by-product into high-purity hydrogen used to make chemicals and plastics.

Praxair CEO Steve Angel said the company launched operations at the US$400 million hydrogen recovery and processing plant, which could link up as early as June with Dow's nearly completed plant to manufacture 1.5 mln tpa of ethylene, the primary building block of most plastics. The plant can independently produce hydrogen before it links with the cracker. The Praxair plant would prevent the escape of 300,000 tpa of carbon dioxide from the US$2 bln eythylene plant. That's less than half the Dow plant's carbon emissions. "You can do things good for the society as you grow," Dow president Jim Fitterling said while visiting the plant last week. "We take our footprint down and make our impact on the communities less."