Exciting times for Evonik

Having recently broken ground on a 400 million euro production plant for nylon 12 at its manufacturing site in Marl, Germany, Evonik Industries AG is prepared for further growth and to consolidate its position as a leading global supplier of the material.

The new unit, which represents Evonik's biggest single investment in Germany to date, will expand the company's nylon 12 production capacity by more than 50 percent, according to Ralf Düssel, head of the high-performance polymers business line at Evonik.

Having introduced the materials 56 years ago at K, Evonik sees increasing demand for the product in a broad range of applications such as automotive, additive manufacturing, oil and gas and more.

"It is the chemical resistance, temperature properties, impact resistance and its easy processability that makes it a competitive material," Düssel explained in an interview. The clear material's "special properties" give it significant advantages in 3D printing over other polymers.

The material, particularly in laser sintering, has certain features including crystallinity that can give a broad operation window.

"We have a proprietary technology to produce the powder, which gives us a larger processing temperature range," he said.

The nylon investment is not the only development Düssel is excited about. Evonik has launched a new generation of its thermoplastic elastomer PEBA, under the brand Vestamid e²X.

Used mainly in sports and consumer goods applications, the new TPE provides low-temperature impact strength, high elasticity, good resilience and low density. Compared with its predecessors, the clear material does not yellow or cloud with age, making it ideal for high-end applications, he said.

Vestamid e²X sets new standards for TPEs, he said, outperforming polyether block amides with its "excellent transparency and color stability and fascinating gloss effect."

Another equally exciting product on display is a new conductive low-extractable multilayer tubing system for fuel lines without the usual fluoropolymer inner layer. The MLT 4840 multilayer solution, broadly based on the Vestamid family of polymers, features a nylon 6/12 inner layer, which makes the product more cost-efficient compared with the fluoropolymer-based counterparts. That can be beneficial for hybrid cars, where fuel can remain in the tubes for a long time.

The extracted polymer can then plug the tube nozzle, leading to fuel line failures.

The system also offers easy processability, offering outstanding properties for extrusion, according to Düssel.

"It shows excellent antistatic properties even after long-term contact with alcohol-containing fuels and is also more cost-effective than systems with fluoropolymers. No comparable fuel line system currently on the world market has this particular combination of properties," the Evonik official added.

Another interesting initiative by the German materials supplier is the investment in a joint test facility with Siemens to tap artificial photosynthesis to produce specialty chemicals.

Conducted in Marl, project Rheticus II aims to develop an efficient and powerful test plant that will use carbon dioxide and water as well as electricity from renewable sources and bacteria to produce the chemicals.

Helped by a 3.5-million euro funding from the German federal government, the project will aim to build a plant that can be installed anywhere CO2 is available, for instance at power plants.

The unit will then use available CO2 as the raw material for the production of high-value chemicals using artificial photosynthesis.

The project includes a bioreactor and the "world's first" CO2 electrolyzer, supplied by Siemens. In a first step, carbon dioxide and water are converted into carbon monoxide and hydrogen in electrolyzers with the aid of electricity. Special microorganisms then convert the CO in the gases synthesized in this way into chemicals.

The two companies expect to start operation at the test facility by early 2020.