Salt End or Saltend is a
hamlet
''The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark'', often shortened to ''Hamlet'' (), is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare sometime between 1599 and 1601. It is Shakespeare's longest play, with 29,551 words. Set in Denmark, the play depicts ...
in the
East Riding of Yorkshire
The East Riding of Yorkshire, or simply East Riding or East Yorkshire, is a ceremonial county and unitary authority area in the Yorkshire and the Humber region of England. It borders North Yorkshire to the north and west, South Yorkshire to t ...
, England, in an area known as
Holderness
Holderness is an area of the East Riding of Yorkshire, on the north-east coast of England. An area of rich agricultural land, Holderness was marshland until it was drained in the Middle Ages. Topographically, Holderness has more in common wit ...
. It is situated on the north bank of the
Humber Estuary just outside the
Hull eastern boundary on the
A1033 road
The A1033 road is a main arterial route across Kingston upon Hull and the East Riding of Yorkshire connecting Hull with Withernsea. The road carries traffic to and from the Port of Hull and Salt End at its western end, and local and holiday tra ...
. It forms part of the
civil parish
In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government below districts and counties, or their combined form, the unitary authorit ...
of
Preston.
Salt End is dominated by a
BP chemical park and a gas-fired power station owned by Triton Power. Chemicals produced at Salt End include acetic acid, acetic anhydride, ammonia, bio-butanol, bio-ethanol, ethyl acetate (ETAC) and ethylene-vinyl alcohol copolymer (EVOH) with animal feed also being produced on site.
Industry
History
The site was opened in May 1914 when the
North Eastern Railway Company built
jetties
A jetty is a structure that projects from land out into water. A jetty may serve as a breakwater, as a walkway, or both; or, in pairs, as a means of constricting a channel. The term derives from the French word ', "thrown", signifying somet ...
connected to its railway system east of King George Dock. The first ship to dock there was carrying of benzene and thereafter, oil came to be imported at the site with the Asiatic Petroleum Company (
Shell
Shell may refer to:
Architecture and design
* Shell (structure), a thin structure
** Concrete shell, a thin shell of concrete, usually with no interior columns or exterior buttresses
** Thin-shell structure
Science Biology
* Seashell, a hard o ...
) and the Anglo Mexican Company (Shell Mex) with BP joining the site in 1921.
In 1930 the site was expanded to produce acetic acids from alcohol which were eventually closed down by BP in 1990. In April 1967, BP bought the distillery at Salt End outright. In 1989, Air Products and Yara started operations on the site with Air Products providing raw material for use on site and Yara producing ammonia which it started shipping around Europe.
In 2000, the
Teesside to Saltend pipeline was opened which transports ethylene to Saltend to be used on site.
In March 2007, BP Announced the sale of their
Vinyl acetate monomer
Vinyl acetate is an organic compound with the formula CH3CO2CH=CH2. This colorless liquid is the precursor to polyvinyl acetate and ethene-vinyl acetate copolymers, important industrial polymers.
Production
The worldwide production capacity of ...
(VAM) and
Ethyl acetate
Ethyl acetate ( systematically ethyl ethanoate, commonly abbreviated EtOAc, ETAC or EA) is the organic compound with the formula , simplified to . This colorless liquid has a characteristic sweet smell (similar to pear drops) and is used in glues ...
(ETAC) plants to
Ineos Oxides which also included ownership and maintenance of the ethylene pipeline from Teesside.
In 2009, BP created the Saltend Chemicals Park
ic which covers an area of and they continued to manage the site until March 2017 when
Teesside
Teesside () is a built-up area around the River Tees in the north of England, split between County Durham and North Yorkshire. The name was initially used as a county borough in the North Riding of Yorkshire.
Historically a hub for heavy manu ...
based PX Group took over the day to day running of the park. The Humber industrial region emits 12 million tonnes of per year; the
biggest in the UK.
BP Chemical works
The BP acetyl plants at Salt End produce about of
acetic acid and
acetic anhydride per year, making BP the largest producer of these chemicals in Europe. Acetic acid is used in VAM, PTA esters and other intermediates and acetic anhydride is used in
cellulose acetate
In biochemistry, cellulose acetate refers to any acetate ester of cellulose, usually cellulose diacetate. It was first prepared in 1865. A bioplastic, cellulose acetate is used as a film base in photography, as a component in some coatings, and ...
and chemical derivatives.
INEOS
INEOS bought out the
vinyl acetate monomer
Vinyl acetate is an organic compound with the formula CH3CO2CH=CH2. This colorless liquid is the precursor to polyvinyl acetate and ethene-vinyl acetate copolymers, important industrial polymers.
Production
The worldwide production capacity of ...
(VAM) and
Ethyl acetate
Ethyl acetate ( systematically ethyl ethanoate, commonly abbreviated EtOAc, ETAC or EA) is the organic compound with the formula , simplified to . This colorless liquid has a characteristic sweet smell (similar to pear drops) and is used in glues ...
(ETAC) plants from BP in March 2007. The VAM plant was closed down in 2013 with the loss of 18 jobs. INEOS had invested £40 million in the plant but it couldn't make a profit against cheaper imports from the United States and Saudi Arabia. The
Ethyl acetate
Ethyl acetate ( systematically ethyl ethanoate, commonly abbreviated EtOAc, ETAC or EA) is the organic compound with the formula , simplified to . This colorless liquid has a characteristic sweet smell (similar to pear drops) and is used in glues ...
(ETAC) is still in production with ETAC being used in printing inks, glues, paints, packaging, cosmetics and pharmaceuticals.
Vivergo Fuels
Vivergo Fuels was a joint venture between BP,
Associated British Foods and
DuPont, with a per year wheat-to-
bioethanol
Ethanol (abbr. EtOH; also called ethyl alcohol, grain alcohol, drinking alcohol, or simply alcohol) is an organic compound. It is an alcohol with the chemical formula . Its formula can be also written as or (an ethyl group linked to a hyd ...
plant at Saltend (although BP later sold its stake to Associated British Foods which gave them a 94% stake in the company). After completion in 2012 the unit was intended to be the largest such plant in the UK and the 5th largest in Europe, but design and commissioning issues affected output in 2013. The bioethanol produced is blended into petrol.
Vivergo's construction was the subject of industrial action in March–April 2011 resulting from the termination of a contract with Redhall Engineering.
Construction was delayed for several months, but in August 2011 it restarted.
Protests at the gate of the Salt End site were heavily policed owing to severe disruption of the site and the road network to the east of Kingston upon Hull. The plant's closure was announced in September 2018 with lower than expected market demand for ethanol in petrol fuel due to the UK government maintaining the mandated blend at 5% by volume rather than increasing to 10% as had been expected. But in February 2021 it was announced that the plant would be restarted after the UK Government stated that
E10 fuel would be introduced from September 2021.
Salt End cogeneration plant
Salt End Power Station was commissioned in 2000 by
Entergy
Entergy Corporation is a Fortune 500 integrated energy company engaged primarily in electric power production and retail distribution operations in the Deep South of the United States. Entergy is headquartered in New Orleans, Louisiana, and gene ...
an American power generator. It was later sold to
Calpine
Calpine Corporation is the largest generator of electricity from natural gas and geothermal resources in the United States, with operations in competitive power markets.
A Fortune 500 company based in Houston, Texas, the company is owned by an ...
Corporation, also an American power generator, in August 2001 for £562 million. In July 2005, Salt End was sold to
International Power
Engie Energy International, formerly International Power, is a multinational electricity generation company headquartered in Newcastle upon Tyne, and a wholly owned subsidiary of the French company Engie (formerly GDF Suez).
The company was form ...
and
Mitsui
is one of the largest ''keiretsu'' in Japan and one of the largest corporate groups in the world.
The major companies of the group include Mitsui & Co. ( general trading company), Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, Nippon Paper Industries ...
(70:30 share) for £500 million. The site was built by Mitsubishi (MHI) and Raytheon.
The station is run on gas using single shaft 3 × Mitsubishi 701F
gas Turbine
A gas turbine, also called a combustion turbine, is a type of continuous flow internal combustion engine. The main parts common to all gas turbine engines form the power-producing part (known as the gas generator or core) and are, in the directio ...
s machines with Alstom 400 MWe
generators. The station has a total output of 1,200 MW; of that 100 MW is allocated to supply BP Chemicals. Each gas turbine has a
Babcock Borsig Power (BBP)
heat recovery steam generator
A heat recovery steam generator (''HRSG'') is an energy recovery heat exchanger that recovers heat from a hot gas stream, such as a combustion turbine or other waste gas stream. It produces steam that can be used in a process (cogeneration) or us ...
, which all lead to one
steam turbine per unit (single shaft machine means Gas turbine and Steam Turbine are on the same shaft). The waste product of electricity generation is steam at the rate of about 120 tonnes/h which is sold to BP Chemicals to use in their process. This makes Salt End one of the most efficient power stations in the UK. The plant is scheduled to use
hydrogen from steam reformed natural gas for 30% of its power.
[
]
Waste incineration
In June 2009 the Environment Agency issued an environmental permit to Waste Recycling Group
FCC Environment (UK) Limited is a waste management company headquartered in Northampton, United Kingdom and a wholly owned subsidiary of Fomento de Construcciones y Contratas. It was formed in May 2012 through the merger and rebranding of Focsa ...
for a non-hazardous waste incinerator at Queen Elizabeth Dock, Saltend. The plant is an energy from waste facility, which will burn waste at high temperatures and use the energy to generate electricity which was later backtracked due to strong opposition from the local town of Hedon with the fear of toxic fumes.
Yorkshire Water
North of the A1033 and away from the main Saltend Chemicals Park, is Yorkshire Water's waste water treatment works. Although Yorkshire Water invested £30 million in October 2015 to improve the odours emanating from the plant, local people in Preston and Hedon
Hedon is a town and civil parish in Holderness in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England. It is situated approximately east of Hull city centre. It lies to the north of the A1033 road at the crossroads of the B1240 and B1362 roads.
It is ...
have employed solicitors to bring about legal action over the smell.
Nippon Gohsei
Nippon Gohsei produce ethyl-vinyl alcohol copolymer (EVOH) on site. The EVOH line at Salt End is the largest in the world and is marketed under the brand name SOARNOL. The product is an alternative packing material composed of carbon, oxygen and hydrogen. When the product enters into the waste stream, it causes no toxic gases when burnt and only burns at half the temperature of polyethylene.
Pensana
In July 2021, clearance works were started on a new factory designed to process rare earth metals mined in Africa. Pensana Salt End
Pensana Saltend is a future processing facility for rare earth metals at Salt End, near Hull in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England. When operating at capability, the plant aims to produce 5% of world demand for neodymium and praseodymium ox ...
would seek to focus on producing neodymium
Neodymium is a chemical element with the symbol Nd and atomic number 60. It is the fourth member of the lanthanide series and is considered to be one of the rare-earth metals. It is a hard, slightly malleable, silvery metal that quickly tarnishe ...
and praseodymium oxide Praseodymium oxide may refer to:
* Praseodymium(III) oxide (dipraseodymium trioxide), Pr2O3
* Praseodymium(IV) oxide (praseodymium dioxide), PrO2
* Praseodymium(III,IV) oxide, Pr6O11
{{Chemistry index ...
.
References
Sources
*
*
External links
International Power
{{authority control
Villages in the East Riding of Yorkshire
Holderness
Natural gas-fired power stations in England
Buildings and structures in the East Riding of Yorkshire
Power stations in Yorkshire and the Humber