Factbook

Steam crackers play a central role in the production of basic chemicals and require a significant amount of energy. Today, steam cracker furnaces are heated by burning fossil fuels. BASF has joined forces with SABIC and Linde to realize concepts for electrically heated steam cracker furnaces. By using electricity from renewable sources, the fundamentally new technology has the potential to reduce CO₂ emissions by as much as 90%.

In 2020, we launched a new, ener­gy-efficient gas treat­ment tech­no­logy deve­loped in coope­ration with ExxonMobil Cata­lysts and Licen­sing LLC. The amine-based tech­no­logy branded OASE^® sulfexx™ helps refiners and gas pro­cessors to meet their sulfur remo­val targets, while reducing their carbon foot­print. It ensures the highly selec­tive remo­val of hydro­gen sulfide (H₂S) from gas streams, while mini­mizing carbon dioxide (CO₂) co-absorp­tion. Thus it provides a compe­ti­tive advan­tage by increasing plant capa­city and lowering invest­ment and pro­duction costs.

Together with our partner Schwalbe, we have deve­loped a new gene­ra­tion of bicycle tubes based on the thermo­plastic poly­urethane (TPU) Elastollan^®. The new Aerothan^® bicycle tube offers excep­tional per­for­mance, puncture resis­tance and stable handling thanks to the special mechanical proper­ties of Elastollan^®. It is around 40% lighter than the esta­blished alterna­tives on the market, is easy to assemble and has a small packing size. Another advan­tage of the Aerothan bicycle tubes is that they are recyclable. They are made entirely of thermo­plastic poly­urethane and can be returned to the manu­facturer easily and free of charge, via the tube recycling pro­gram. The material of the old tubes is pro­cessed and then reused as sealing or insula­ting material.

With BauderECO, the German company Bauder has deve­loped a sustain­able roof insu­lation material that is largely made from biomass, recyclable and near-natural starting materials. Lupranat^® M70R/MB – an iso­cya­nate from BASF – makes up a large part of this. Bio­methane is used in the pro­duction of Lupranat via the certified biom­ass balance pro­cess in the Pro­duction Verbund. In this way, the renew­able raw material can be assigned to the product. The roof insu­lation material BauderECO offers maximum insu­la­tion per­for­mance with mini­mum raw material and energy input. BASF thus makes an important contri­bution to climate protection.

Demand for environmentally compa­tible products with high scrub resistance and low levels of volatile organic compounds (VOC) has become a driving force in the European market for water-based interior paints in recent years. For 20 years, the market has been domi­nated by ethylene vinyl acetate dispersions. BASF offers an attractive alternative: Acronal^® 6292. Acronal^® 6292 is a styrene-acrylate binder that makes it possible to produce environ­mentally friendly, biocide-free and low-VOC paints.

Filter and personal hygiene pro­ducts such as face masks, tissues and dispos­able gowns are made with different layers of poly­pro­pylene (PP) fleece materials. The barrier layer is created by a melt­blown process, which entails blowing a melted polymer onto a moving collec­tor to form a non­woven fabric, which acts as a barrier to liquids or aero­sols whilst main­taining breath­ability. BASF plastic additives experts and a global polymer pro­ducer jointly deve­loped an alter­native solution to the standard tech­no­logy. The new tech­no­logy improves the molecular design of a meltblown PP grade, thereby ful­filling the high sensorial standards required by personal hygiene pro­ducers. The solution, built on Irgatec^® pro­prietary tech­nology, can be easily added during the polymer pro­duction process.

The conven­tional four-way con­version catalysts used in gasoline engines filter out ultra­fine particles and chemi­cally remove sub­stances such as carbon mono­xide (CO), unburned hydro­car­bons (HC) and nitro­gen oxides (NOx) in exhaust gas. This exhaust puri­fi­cation techno­logy was signifi­cantly improved with the develop­ment of the FWC+ catalyst – the next gene­ra­tion of the four-way con­version catalyst. The FWC+ catalyst is a highly efficient filter that reduces particu­lates in exhaust gas emissions by up to 95%. The techno­logy was initially intro­duced to the Chinese passen­ger car market in 2019 before being launched in Europe in 2020.

Chemetall offers a range of pro­ducts to improve the sustai­na­bility, quality, pro­duc­tivity and safety of PET recycling pro­cesses. The inte­gra­ted cleaning solu­tions Gardoclean^®, Gardobond^® additives, Gardo^® Pure and Gardofloc^® cover the entire washing and waste­water treat­ment pro­cess for PET recycling and comply with the strictest quality regu­la­tions, thus suppor­ting custo­mers to close material cycles and reduce CO₂ emissions. Compa­tible with food-industry standards, these cost-effective tech­no­logies are also suitable for LDPE and HDPE multi­layer packa­ging films and can thoroughly remove all types of adhe­sives. Chemetall supports its custo­mers to increase the quality of PET flake output and reduce energy and resource consumption.

Enzymes are essential ingre­dients in modern deter­gent for­mu­la­tions and help to meet con­sumer needs for products that are tough on stains and gentle to the environ­ment. The inno­vative combi­na­tion of Lavergy^® C Bright 100 L with selec­tive ingred­ients from BASF creates a power­ful per­for­mance-differen­tia­ted solution that keeps clothes from turning gray even after multiple washes. This sustain­able one-fits-all solution is suitable for use with many types of fabric – whether whites or colors, cotton or syn­thetic fibers. Lavergy^® C Bright 100 L is also certified accor­ding to the standards of various eco­labeling systems including EU Eco­label and Blue Angel.

Sustainably pro­duced food is playing an increasing­ly impor­tant role for con­sumers. With Opteinics^TM, BASF’s animal nutrition experts have deve­loped a digital solution to help cus­tomers mini­mize the environ­mental impact of animal protein with an emphasis on animal feed pro­duction. The com­position of feed alone can posi­tively influence up to 80% of the total carbon foot­print of animal protein such as milk, meat and eggs. Opteinics stands for “Opti­mizing Protein Ana­lytics” and is inte­gra­ted into the com­pound feed formu­la­tion soft­ware. The plat­form is based on globally reco­gnized environ­mental impact metho­do­lo­gies such as the UN Food & Agri­culture Orga­nization Livestock Environ­mental Assess­ment & Per­for­mance (LEAP) Partner­ship guidel­ines and draws its data from im­partial data­bases like the Global Feed LCA Institute (GFLI).

BioSolutions by BASF, as part of our por­tfo­lio for sus­tain­able agri­culture, provide flexible pest and disease con­trol for a wide range of field and specialty crops. Deve­loped through in-house exper­tise and strate­gic part­ners­hips and based on natural mecha­nisms like bene­ficial nema­todes, these natural part­ners can be used in organic farming or as a com­ple­ment to con­ven­tional crop protec­tion pro­ducts. Bene­ficial nema­todes like Nemasys^® C provide effec­tive and flexible control when other crop protec­tion products cannot reach pests, such as over­wintering larvae of codling moths in apple orchards.