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[September 2009]
H C Starck Increases Production Capacity for Tungsten Catalyst Intermediates/Precursors
To participate in the predicted long-term growth in international markets for fine chemicals, agrochemicals and special catalysts, the management of Business Line Chemicals at H C Starck (Goslar, Germany) is placing specific importance in its strategic position as a supplier to the chemical industry of high quality tungsten catalyst intermediates.
Considering the periodic global shortage of high quality sodium tungstate and ammonium metatungstate compounds, Starck has increased the production capacity for these intermediates and can today meet the vast majority of the known world requirements.
“As one of the few fully integrated enterprises, H C Starck is already able to take the individual product wishes of the chemical industry into account, regarding the physical and chemical properties of the products, right at the start of the production chain,” said Silke Gray, Vice-President Sales & Marketing of the Chemicals Business Line at the Starck headquarters in Goslar, Germany. “We can set our process parameters over the complete value added chain in such a way that we can in fact solve the unique problems brought to us by our customers with a very custom approach.
“Close and trusting cooperation between our applications engineering department and our customers’ technology departments has always in the past achieved highly satisfactory solutions for all parties; we are now working even harder to ensure that this success continues with existing and new partners. In addition, our customers are now able to satisfy their complete requirements from the one source, eliminating the need to use several different sources to achieve the same supply objective.”
As a complement to its primary chemical supply, H C Starck also offers comprehensive expertise in the area of tungsten recycling. With decades of experience in the recycling of tungsten from the classic hard metal applications, the company can also recycle tungsten-containing materials from the chemical industry. These would include the reprocessing of spent catalysts and production wastes as well as the technology transfer for the recovery of tungsten losses from wastewater effluents at customer sites. Tungsten is separated from other substances in the vast range of starting materials and is then converted to pure tungsten chemicals. Beyond the clear economic and ecological benefits of recycling, the dependencies on primary raw material sources can also be reduced in the form of a direct closed loop. In addition, valuable raw material resources are additionally conserved.
ENDS