Sasol Alumina - High Purity Alumina and Hydrotalcite used as Catalyst Supports, Polymer Additives, Colloidal Dispersions and Raw Materials for Ceramics

The main focus of Sasol's business unit 'Inorganic Specialty Chemicals', which belonged until 2001 to CONDEA Chemie, is on the production of synthetic aluminas derived from aluminium alkoxides. Our aluminas have high chemical purity and dispersibility. Important properties such as pore volume, particle size and specific surface area can be adjusted. Due to their variability of properties, these products over more than 30 years have found their way into a broad range of different applications, including catalyst supports, coatings, polymer additives, paint detackifier, sol-gel abrasives and ceramics, and many more.

We are a producer of:

• High purity alumina
• Dispersible alumina
• Precipitated alumina
• Hydrotalcite
• Silica alumina
• Alumina spheres, beads, and extrudates

DISPERAL / DISPAL - COLLOIDAL BOEHMITE ALUMINA POWDERS

DISPERAL and DISPAL are the trade names for the high purity, highly dispersible, colloidal boehmite alumina powders manufactured by Sasol.

These aluminas, which are nano-sized in the dispersed phase, exhibit a unique combination of purity, consistency, and dispersibility that make them excellent materials for use in demanding colloidal applications. Traditionally our range of dispersible boehmites is used in applications such as sol-gel ceramics, binder for catalysis, refractory materials, rheology control, surface frictionising and paint detackification.

Other more recently developed uses include surface coating as well as polymer additives.

PURAL AND CATAPAL - HIGH PURITY BOEHMITE AND BAYERITE ALUMINAS

This family of aluminas (Boehmite, aluminum oxide monohydrate, AlOOH, and Bayerite, aluminum trihydrate Al(OH)3) has historically been used as supports or binders for catalysts in refinery and chemical processes. Due to the ability that these kinds of aluminas peptize in the presence of organic/inorganic acids they are widely used as shaped catalyst support materials.

Recent developments in many other applications have indicated these aluminas have applications in areas far beyond catalysis.

PURALOX AND CATALOX - HIGH THERMAL STABLE AND LOW ATTRITION LOSS

PURALOX and CATALOX are the trademarks for the aluminium oxides (Al2O3 - gamma alumina, delta alumina and theta alumina) derived from the controlled activation of high purity aluminas.

The proprietary processes used in the preparation of these high purity aluminium oxides allow us to control many important physical properties and hence "tailor-made" a product for your process. Due to the tightly controlled processing conditions during and after manufacturing these aluminium oxides, PURALOX and CATALOX provide excellent specific catalytic activities, high surface area stability and low attrition loss.

PURALOX and CATALOX are arguably the best starting materials for the catalyst industry where consistency and an unobtrusive nature of the support are highly desired. These characteristics are of great importance for fluid and slurry bed reactions.

Due to their high thermal stability, PURALOX and CATALOX are widely used raw materials for wash coat formulations in emission control catalysts.

SIRAL AND SIRALOX - SILICA DOPED ALUMINAS

Sasol markets a wide range of doped materials. Silica doped materials are sold worldwide under the trade names SIRAL and SIRALOX for their silica-alumina hydrates and oxides respectively.

The know-how gained from the production of high purity alumina products has been carried over to our range of doped materials so that the quality of the products is uncompromised and manufactured to the same high standards. The use of dopants affects the physical properties of alumina in many ways. SIRAL and SIRALOX is not only more thermal stable than the high purity aluminas but they are also more acidic materials.

Both the hydrate and the oxide are suitable carriers for catalytic processes where surface acidity is required to enhance the catalytic activity.