Arkema Inaugurated New HFO Facility in the U.S.

Production has commenced at Arkema's Calvert City, Kentucky manufacturing facility for Forane 1233zd, or 1-chloro-3,3,3-trifluoropropene. The HFO is used as a blowing agent for polyurethanes. Plans for the $60 million facility were disclosed in 2022. The new HFC production line is an improvement over the previous one and has a capacity of 15kT/year. The non-ozone depleting foam blowing agent has a 99% in global warming potential from the legacy HFC product. It is SNAP-approved for most PU foam applications, notably insulation.

“This new Forane® 1233zd production unit demonstrates Arkema’s ambition to deliver sustainable high-performance materials to our US and global customers in building insulation and thermal management”, said Laurent Tellier, Senior Vice-President High Performance Polymers and Fluorogases. “This investment confirms our commitment to support the transition of the foam industry towards low GWP solutions, and will enable us to follow the rapid expansion of data centers cooling needs”.

Source: Arkema