Phenol - basis of the first plastic

Construction began in August 1963 and in November 1964 the plant came on stream. The process started with benzene, which was hydrogenated to cyclohexane. The cyclohexane was air oxidized to cyclohexanol, which was in turn dehydrogenated in a vapour phase reaction over a platinum catalyst to phenol. An elegant process, that would have suited Monsanto needs well. The SD phenol plant was, however, a dismal failure. Phenol production reached only 50 to 60 per cent of the design rate and the best phenol yield achieved was in the low 90s. After several years of concentrated technical effort to bring the plant up to its design parameters, it was finally shut down in 1968. When it became clear that economic operation would not be attainable the decision was taken in 1966 to revert to a process which had been well established world-wide, the cumene-phenol process. It required a further capital investment of $6 million. By that time the Australian market for the co-produced acetone had grown sufficiently to absorb it; the plant started up in 1968, came up to performance specification in a few weeks and has operated satisfactorily ever since. It is the first cumene-phenol plant of this type in the southern hemisphere and the only source of phenol and acetone in Australia.

The case history of the SD phenol plant merits historic record because it demonstrates the inevitable risks of pioneering; every now and then such failures must occur. Yet when industry insists on weighing risk carefully, assessing and re-assessing technical and commercial risks before major investments, only too easily it is labelled 'risk-averse'.

Monsanto persisted with the development because they were committed to corporate business and know-how based on phenol, particularly phenol-formaldehyde.

Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering