Bayer MaterialScience (BMS, Leverkusen / Germany; www.bayerbms.com) has opened its new EUR 5m technical centre for isocyanate production processes at Dormagen / Germany – see Plasteurope.com of 25.02.2011. Completed in less than a year, the new centre pools global research activities in hydrogenation technology to produce precursors for MDI and TDI.

BMS says the adiabatic process variant it has developed for MDI eliminates the need for heat transfer and “enables a substantial gain in efficiency.” The product is also of “significantly higher purity.” The technology is already proving “extremely successful” at the company’s new 350,000 t/y plant at Shanghai / China, said Thorsten Dreier, head of isocyanate research. “The conventional process would have been too complex and too expensive for a facility of this size,” he explains.

Along with optimisation of the conventional process and Bayer’s adiabatic technology, the centre will focus on researching and improving the hydrogenation of dinitrotoluene to obtain toluene diamine, the direct precursor to TDI, as well as the “Deacon” process for the oxidation of hydrogen chloride.