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Christmas cheer for Britain's biggest chemical plant, but there are two distinct problems
You've doubtless heard of the National Grid, the network of pylons and electricity infrastructure ensuring the country is supplied with power.
You're probably aware that there is a similar national network of gas pipelines sending methane into millions of our boilers. But far fewer people, even among the infrastructure cognoscenti, are even faintly familiar with the UK Ethylene Pipeline System.
Yet this pipeline network, obscure as it might be, is one of the critical parts of Britain's industrial infrastructure. And it's also a useful clue to help explain why the government has just announced it's spending more than £120m to bail out the chemical plant at Grangemouth in Scotland.
Ethylene is one of those precursor chemicals essential for the manufacture of all sorts of everyday products. React it with terephthalic acid and you end up with polyester.
Combine it with chlorine and you end up with PVC. And when you polymerise ethylene itself you end up with polyethylene - the most important plastic in the world.
Why Grangemouth matters Ethylene is, in short, a very big deal. Hence, why, many years ago, a pipeline was built to ensure Britain's various chemical plants would have a reliable supply of the stuff.
The pipes connected the key nodes in Britain's chemicals infrastructure: the plants in the north of Cheshire, which derived chemicals from salt, the vast Wilton petrochemical plant in Teesside and, up in Scotland, the most important point in the network - Grangemouth. The refinery would suck in oil and gas from the North Sea and turn it into ethane, which it would then "crack.
Amir Nisi
Creative and experienced content writer with 6+ years of experience lazy to create unique content strategy for News5 to turn website visitors into customers.
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