BPCL despatched first indigenous Super Absorbent Polymer at Kochi Refinery

Kochi: Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited  despatched the first indigenous Super Absorbent Polymer from the Propylene Derivatives Petrochemical Complex at BPCL Kochi Refinery on 22 July 2022. 

"The despatch of the first indigenous Super Absorbent Polymer marks the culmination of the pioneering R&D effort of BPCL towards value enhancement of acrylic acid produced from the first world scale acrylic acid unit installed in India by BPCL," shared Shri Ajith Kumar Executive Director (Kochi Refinery), who flagged off the first consignment to M/s Bapuji Surgical, Bangalore in the presence of other senior officials of BPCL. 

Super Absorbent Polymer, the key component of sanitary napkins and other incontinence products, is being produced for the first time in India. The Technology for Niche petrochemical is not available for licensing and BPCL R&D centre took this challenge to develop and end to end process for the production of hygiene SAP and  a demonstration plant of 200 tonne per annum had set at Kochi Refinery. SAP is made using the in-house acrylic acid produced at Kochi Refinery.  
 
The demonstration project will be followed by setting up a commercial plant of 50,000 tonne per annum capacity, thereby saving foreign exchange worth Rs 1,000 crore to make India Aatmanirbhar in this niche and fast-growing segment.