Showa Denko Gas Products (SDK Gas Products) will build a new liquefied CO2 gas plant in Oita Petrochemical Industrial Complex (Oita City). The LCO2 gas production capacity of the new plant is planned to be 15,000 tons per year and the operation will start in August 2018.

The company has already a plant which uses the source of desulfurization gas produced by neighboring JXTG Energy Oita Refinery, and with the construction of the new plant SDK Gas Products will have a dual-base production system in the Kyushu district having a two times more output capacity of 30,000 tons per year in total. The investment amounts to several billion yen.
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The new plant produces liquefied carbon dioxide using a raw material of by-product gas originated from SDK’s chemical plant in the industrial complex. Like Kawasaki Plant of the company, the plant has a good advantage to produce LCO2 free from any risk related to the operating condition of crude gas supplying source thanks to the integrated production system inside the Group for its products.

At present many domestic LCO2 gas plants use off-gas from oil refineries which comes out at the time of purification.
However, due the declining demand for gasoline, the supply of crude gas has been on the decrease as a trend.

With the background of such a situation SDK Gas Products has so far been responding to the booming demand by means of importing dry ice even out of the peak season and also using procurement by the inter-base transportation.

However, the hike of the transportation cost has come up as an issue. With the establishment of this new plant the company wants to secure a stable supply particularly to the Kyushu and Chu-Shikoku districts.

In this connection, the company reinforced the production capacity of the Kawasaki Plant up to 70t/day in July of this year.