Posted on 09/04/2015 6:09:31 AM PDT by thackney
Ohio is standing on third base and ready to cross home plate in the development of a proposed $5.7 billion ethane cracker plant in eastern Ohio, Gov. John Kasich said Thursday.
Kasich joined the CEO of the Thai company that wants to build the plant in outlining plans for a $100 million outlay over the next year for engineering and design work at the site to determine the project's future.
Columbus Business First broke the story in April that the plant was being considered in Belmont County, near the heart of oil and natural gas exploration in the Utica shale field. The processing plant would take ethane, a component of natural gas, and "crack" it into etheyene, which is used in the petrochemical industry.
“If we didn’t have the work force,” the plant wouldn’t be possible, Kasich said at a Statehouse gathering.
Petrochemical complexes, such as crackers, are huge capital investments with long lifespans and they need highly skilled workers, including chemical engineers, chemists and lab techs, to operate them.
PTT Global Chemical Public Company Ltd. CEO Supattanapong Punmeechaow called the $100 million commitment a milestone in the project. The company has signed contracts with two groups of engineering firms led by Bechtel Enterprises Holdings Inc. and Fluor Corp. (NYSE:FLR) for engineering design and cost estimates.
Punmeechaow noted, too, the availability of skilled labor in Ohio as a factor in the company’s decision making. He expects to know whether the project is realistic by the end of 2016.
Kasich, said the $100 million is “a significant investment to get to the next milestone.” The plant would take more than four years to build, he said.
Economic development group JobsOhio has been a big driver of the initiative. President John Minor said the plant represents the largest capital project in the group’s pipeline and would result in hundreds of direct and thousands of indirect jobs, including those needed to construct the facility.
If built, the petrochemical facility would take over land occupied by an aged coal-fired plant owned by FirstEnergy Corp.(NYSE:FE).
Great announcement for Ohio, who lost the much larger $10 billion Shell Cracker plant to Pennsylvania. You will see more of these in the northeast and gulf coast over the next 20 years.
The other boost is that this will aid a return of the injection molding industry (and other plastics) to the region, which dominated that industry in the 1990s.
Lower natural gas prices have been a huge boost to glass manufacturing already and has enabled them to complete globally with anyone, including the Chinese.
U.S. Manufacturing costs are almost as low as China’s, and that’s a very big deal
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3305686/posts
JUNE 26, 201
“Made in the U.S.A” is becoming more affordable. The reason? Fracking.
You don’t need to a Nobel Prize in economics to know that the fracking revolution has been good for the U.S. What’s not so well known is just how competitive cheap oil and gas has made American manufacturing. BCG, the Boston consultancy, estimates the average cost to manufacture goods in the U.S. is now only 5% higher than in China and is actually 10% to 20% lower than in major European economies. Even more striking: BCG projects that by 2018 it will be 2% to 3% cheaper to make stuff here than in China.
THAILAND?
Made from the freshest fracked and cracked Marcellus Ethane!
If this keeps up, the crackers will be taking over Ohio AND Pennsylvania. That’s 38 potential electoral votes to flip!
How soon they forget.
Ohio Ping
When you crack Ethane you get Methane, Natural Gas in common parlance.
That’s racist!
This:
To this:
The link from #19 is a nice summary.
What is a Cracker and Why Should I Care?
http://education.afpm.org/petrochemicals/what-is-a-cracker-and-why-should-i-care/
Once the ethane is separated it is shipped by pipeline to a cracker facility, which is a very sophisticated series of processes that convert the ethane to ethylene. The first process is using steam to transport a mixture of ethane and a small amount of propane to a series of industrial furnaces and heating it to approximately 1500 degrees Fahrenheit, which requires a lot of energy. At that temperature single bond of the ethane molecule is loosened to the point that it loses two of the hydrogen atoms. The two hydrogen atoms combine and form a stable hydrogen molecule known as H2. In addition to ethylene, a number of other molecules are formed, but ethylene is in much greater abundance (about 80 percent) than the other substances.
The next step is sending the mixture of very hot gases – liquids also become gases at that temperature – to a series of heat exchangers that use steam to cool the gaseous mixture. Once cooled, the mixture of steam and gases go to a tower where cold water is poured onto it from above to force all the different liquids to the bottom. These liquids are usually hydrocarbons with more than five carbon atoms. This process is also called quenching and the tower is referred to as a quenching tower.
Two separate product streams come out of the quenching tower. One product stream is water and a mixture of heavier hydrocarbons commonly referred to as pyrolysis gasoline. The water is cleaned and recycled back into the quench tower. The pyrolysis gasoline is sent to a separation unit that extracts the petrochemical aromatics (benzene, toluene and xylenes) for use in making plastics and other chemicals. The remaining liquid hydrocarbon mixture is used to blend in automotive fuels or sent to a refinery for further processing.
I got it.
An Ohio cracker factory.
So THAT’S where white people are made...
Oh, man, are the bro’s gonna be pissed - they’s making crackers in FACTORIES now?
$#@#$^ crackers, those racist pigs....[whispering] What? Really? Oh...Um, uh...NEVER MIND!
How do they get away with having a plant that hires crackers only?
Actually, this plant will only be operated by the Amish.
Ethane to make Ethylene.
Usually “cracking’ refers to breaking carbon-carbon bonds down to lower constituents as in a distillation column.
Sohio. Standard Oil of Ohio, used to have a cracker plant in the Cleveland Flats. I drove thru The Flats last Sunday. What a mess!
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