TORONTO – Ciba Specialty Chemicals has reached an exclusive agreement to market dibasic acid corrosion inhibitors produced at a new plant built by Cathay Biotechnology in Jining, China, the companies announced last week.
In a May 17 presentation at the Society of Tribologists and Lubrication Engineers annual meeting, officials claimed that the plant is a unique source of dibasics because it makes them using fermentation.
The combination of Cathays novel manufacturing process and Cibas technology, market and application expertise offers substantial opportunities for both companies, Ciba Global Head of Process and Lubricant Additives Thomas Engelhardt said in a statement that the companies distributed.
The plant, which began production early last year, has capacity to make 6 million tons per year of dibasic acids and can easily be expanded to 10 million tons. Alexander Kedo, Cathays business director for the United States and Europe, said the plant employs a yeast used to clean up oil spills. Unlike chemical processes typically used to make dibasic acids, he claimed, Cathays yields no toxic by-products.
Ciba, which is based in Basel, Switzerland, already supplied corrosion inhibitors based on other technologies, but the agreement with Cathay marks its first offering of dibasics. The agreement covers most of the material produced by the plant. David Hughes, Cibas global head of new business for process and lubricant additives, said the company will sell the products for use in metalworking fluids, lubricants, fuels and related markets. In the lubricants industry, the products will be marketed under the Irgacor brand name.
Cathay was founded in 1997 and is based in Powell, Ohio.