1965:

Construction of the First All-Inclusive Ethylene Plant, Entry into Large-Scale Plant Construction

Starting in the 1950’s, plant construction grew to totally new dimensions. The most important customer group was the petrochemical industry, in which gas separation offered new application options.

For Linde, these orders represented the firm’s entry into the large-scale plant construction business with totally new technical and financial challenges. After the American competition in particular had gone over to supplying complete turnkey chemical plants from a single source, Linde also ventured this step. It is a business as riddled with risks as it is replete with possible profits. Services, costs and deadlines are guaranteed in so-called turnkey-lump-sum contracts. Today Linde Engineering is one of the world’s top suppliers in the construction of turnkey process engineering facilities.

Linde built its first all-inclusive ethylene plant including the required cracking furnaces in 1965 for Veba Chemie in Scholven near Gelsenkirchen. There followed further large-scale plants in Germany, France, Spain, the Netherlands and overseas – in turnkey condition and for a fixed price. Some 50% of all orders for the construction of petrochemical plants in Europe went to Linde until 1972. In this ethylene plant the petroleum product naphtha was separated in the cracking furnaces into ethylene and propylene, which were then separated and fractionated through low temperature distillation. Besides naphtha, other raw materials such as natural gas, butane and propane could also be used.

Ethylene plant in Scholven, Germany

Ethylene is gaseous and one of the simplest hydrocarbon compounds. It can, for example, be used as a ripening hormone for fruit and vegetables. Ethylene acquired its greatest significance, however, as a raw material for the manufacture of the plastic polyethylene, from which, for example, foils and bags are made. Modern ethylene plants are a complex network with over 300 process engineering assemblies operating at working temperatures from 170 degrees below zero to well over 1,000 degrees above zero Celsius.

In 1990 Linde Engineering received the largest order to date in the history of the corporation in the amount of 1.3 billion marks from BASF. As general contractor, Linde assumed the planning, construction and set-up of a turnkey ethylene plant in Antwerp. In 1992, Linde was also able to add China to its list of customers for ethylene plants. Linde built China’s largest plant for ethylene production in 2004. The growing market in the most populous country on earth also offers Linde plant construction a large area of activity for the future.

Finally, Linde built the world’s largest ethylene plant in 2000 in Bandar Imam, Iran. The plant was integrated into an already existing chemical complex and has a capacity of 1.1 million tons of ethylene and 200,000 tons of propylene per year. The raw material is natural gas.