Leverkusen
The heart of the Leverkusen Therban ® plant
Steel walls almost 20 cm thick are just one superlative of the 140 t high-pressure reactor that arrived at Bayer's Leverkusen site in early March 2000. Despite its size - over 4 m in diameter and more than 5 meters in height - it is still not the largest reactor there. "However, it is the only one of this size that can withstand an inner pressure of up to 150 bar", Dr Klaus-Uwe Ziegs, member of Bayer's Central Technology department and construction project manager, explained. When the plant goes on-stream later this year, nitrile rubber will be hydrogenated in this reaction vessel under high pressure.
Major parts of the cylinder-shaped vessel such as the body and the end caps were forged from single pieces of steel. Only very few European manufacturers are able to produce such structures. Therefore, the vessel came more than 400 miles from Bavaria - by ship and by heavy-duty truck. It was finally lifted from a truck - over a distance of almost 50 m - into the plant's open-air section. This was done in the morning of March 3, 2000, with the help of a gigantic high-precision crane with a carrying power of 1,000 t.
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