Ruhrchemie

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OQ plant Ruhrchemie, formerly OXEA plant Ruhrchemie
General view of the OQ plant Ruhrchemie, formerly OXEA plant Ruhrchemie

The Ruhr Chemie is a company founded in 1927/28 the chemical industry . The company based in the Oberhausen district of Holten is now the main German location of the OQ company .

history

For a short time at the beginning of the 20th century , one of the first German airports appeared to be emerging in the Holtener Bruch, which had been largely drained by the canalization of the Emscher . However, it stayed with air shows and training flights; The course and outcome of the First World War prevented the airport project from being realized. Instead, the area was used for industrial purposes at the end of the 1920s.

The company, which was founded in 1927 by numerous Ruhr mining companies as a coal chemical company and renamed Ruhrchemie AG in April 1928, began producing fertilizers at the Holten site in 1929 . In 1936 the first plant for the production of liquid hydrocarbons to work according to the Fischer-Tropsch process went into operation. In 1938 Otto Roelen developed the oxo synthesis of aldehydes , which are used, among other things, to produce polyols , carboxylic acids , esters and solvents.

After 1945, the Allies banned the production of synthetic fuels and dismantled the corresponding facilities, which had already been badly damaged during the war. At the beginning of the 1950s, this led to a shift in the production focus from coal to petrochemicals .

In 1958, Farbwerke Hoechst initially took a 25 percent stake in Ruhrchemie. Participation was gradually increased to two thirds in the 1960s and 1970s. Production of high density polyethylene (HDPE) began in 1960, and low density polyethylene (LDPE) in 1972.

In 1977, as a joint project by Ruhrchemie and Ruhrkohle AG, a large-scale pilot plant for coal gasification was built; 1986 saw the start-up of the Ruhr synthesis gas plant.

In 1984, Hoechst took over the remaining shares in Ruhrchemie and incorporated them into Hoechst AG as the Ruhrchemie plant . The production of fertilizers was shut down in 1990. In 1999 Ruhrchemie came to Celanese AG; From 2007 to 2020 it was part of Oxea GmbH, which was created in March 2007 from the merger of European Oxo and selected business areas of Celanese Chemicals, the successor company of Hoechst AG. After OXEA was renamed OQ Chemicals in mid-May 2020, the plant is officially called OQ Werk Ruhrchemie.

The current factory premises have an area of ​​about. 1.2 km². The main focus of the product range includes Oxo-Intermediates & Oxo-Derivatives. The number of employees is around 1,065 after the company had more than 3,000 employees at times in the 1940s and 1950s.

GDCh memorial plaque at the Oxea Ruhrchemie plant

Ruhrchemie has been included in the theme route Oberhausen: Industry makes city of the route of industrial culture by the RVR . The Society of German Chemists (GDCh) installed a memorial plaque on Historic Chemistry Sites on September 24, 2013 in memory of Otto Roelen .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See Manfred Rasch: Ruhrchemie AG 1945-1951. Reconstruction, denazification and dismantling . In: Technikgeschichte , Vol. 54 (1987), H. 2, pp. 104-120.
  2. ↑ For the technical aspects cf. Jürgen Falbe (among others): The activities of Ruhrchemie AG in the field of coal gasification . In: Glückauf-Forschungshefte , Vol. 44 (1983), pp. 140-145.
  3. ^ GDCh: Otto Roelen and Ruhrchemie

literature

  • Dietrich Behrends: Chemical history was written in the Holtener Bruch , in: Oberhausen '98 - a year book , pp. 85–91.
  • Monika Elm: Ruhrchemie. Plant and workforce in words and pictures 1927 - 2010 . Klartext, Essen 2011. ISBN 978-3-8375-0530-6
  • Manfred Rasch: Coal chemistry in the Ruhr area. Economy, technology and patents; on the previous and founding history of Ruhrchemie AG 1926 - 1928 . In: History of technology in the Ruhr area, history of technology for the Ruhr area . Ed. And edit. by Manfred Rasch. Klartext, Essen 2004, ISBN 3-89861-376-3 , pp. 785-815.

Web links

Commons : Ruhrchemie  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Coordinates: 51 ° 31 ′ 31 ″  N , 6 ° 47 ′ 58 ″  E