Air Products and Chemicals Inc.
What: Provides atmospheric gases, process and specialty gases, performance materials, equipment and services worldwide.
Where: 2500 Yankee Road, Middletown. Company based in Pennsylvania.
Phone: (513) 424-0954
Website: www.airproducts.com
MIDDLETOWN — Air Products and Chemicals Inc. is investing in the city.
The Pennsylvania-based company, which has produced industrial and other gases in Middletown since the 1960s, has committed to one project and has a proposed project worth hundreds of millions.
Air Products announced Thursday it will replace, upgrade and add equipment at its current Middletown facility, 2500 Yankee Road. It’s considering an estimated $315 million project to model new technology and build a first-of-its-kind facility in North America on the site of Middletown Works to convert waste gas from AK Steel’s blast furnace to steam and electricity. The latter project hinges on permits and economic factors.
“This new investment shows commitment to our customers in the Midwest market, it will expand our capability to serve the area, and it provides significant modernization of our operations there,” said Wilbur Mok, vice president of Tonnage Gases North America for Air Products, in a news release.
Construction on Air Products’ existing facility would start the beginning of 2012 and plans are for construction to finish by the end of next year, said Art George, Air Products spokesman. At the peak of construction, 100 temporary construction jobs are expected to be created, George said.
The project would put in a new air separation unit to replace some operations of an air separation unit currently in use. It would have production capacity of oxygen of 700 tons a day, according to Air Products. A hydrogen production unit, PRISM Hydrogen Generator steam methane reformer, will add additional hydrogen production and produces more than one million cubic feet per day of hydrogen, according to the company.
Hydrogen is used in steelmaking by its on-site customer AK Steel Holding Corp., George said.
The primary use of hydrogen is in two types of annealing processes at AK, said Alan McCoy, AK spokesman. Box annealing follows the cold rolling process, which adds strength to steel but makes steel brittle, McCoy said. So the brittle steel goes through an annealing furnace to relieve the stress.
In continuous annealing, steel coils are fed constantly into annealing furnaces before being coated by zinc and aluminum, he said.
“We have been a customer of theirs for several years and for several industrial gases,” McCoy said.
Contact this reporter at (513) 705-2551 or clevingston@coxohio.com.
About the Author