LEVERKUSEN, Germany (March 2) — Bayer A.G. will proceed this year with construction of a 350,000-metric-ton-per-year methylene diphenyl diisocyanate in Caojing, China.
The project, initially part of a $1.8 billion build-up of capacities for various Bayer MaterialScience materials in China, should be on stream by 2008, Bayer said.
The MDI plant is part of $875 million in investments recently approved by the Bayer board of directors. The MDI unit at Bayer´s Caojing chemicals complex originally was to be 230,000 tons per year, according to plans disclosed in 2004, but the projected sizes was boosted last year by about 52 percent to 350,000 tons.
MDI is a basic raw material in the production of polyurethane insulation materials, which are used in refrigeration applications, including heat insulation in construction applications and thermal insulation of pipes.
Bayer is supposed to complete work this summer on a "splitter" facility at the Caojing site that will be capable of generating 80,000 tons of crude MDI.
A separate plant for making toluene diisocyanate also is planned.