GS Caltex promotes green energy
By Kim Da-ye
A lot of innovations are taking place at GS Caltex amid its search for new growth engines.
Korea’s major oil refiner had a good year in 2010 with sales rising 25 percent to 35 trillion won and operating profit jumping 60 percent to 1.2 trillion won.
The firm’s Chairman Hur Dong-soo, however, decided to look to new revenue sources as the oil market has become increasingly volatile with the government pushing eco-friendly policies.
One of the major fields GS Caltex is exploring is production of anode materials, a key component of lithium rechargeable batteries.
They are rarely produced locally, compared to the materials needed for the other major components, the cathode, electrolyte and separators.
In February, GS Caltex signed a partnership deal with Japan’s largest energy company JX Nippon Oil & Energy (JX NOE) and held a groundbreaking ceremony in May for an anode materials plant in Gumi, North Gyeongsang Province.
The plant is expected to produce 2,000 tons of soft carbon anodes a year from 2012, which would provide 10 percent of the global supply of the material for lithium batteries.
The firm said it aims to expand the capacity to 4,000 tons a year to lead the global market.
Soft carbon anodes are made from coke, a byproduct of the oil refining process that is heat-treated at 1,000 Celsius degrees.
The oil refiner claims that it is the first Korean company to produce the material using private technology and the world’s second. Most of the anodes are currently imported from Japan.
GS Caltex’s interests in rechargeable batteries include developing carbon-based materials for electric double layer capacitors (EDLC), used for energy storage.
With JX NOE, it set up a joint company called Power Carbon Technology and finished building the plant in March 2010.
An EDLC is semi-permanent, fast-charging and high-powered, and can be used as an auxiliary power supply for hybrid and electric vehicles.
“We hope to increase the production capacity step by step to 900 tons a year in 2015 from the current 300 tons. The trade balance would improve by 200 billion won in the next five years,” the firm said.
Another area GS Caltex is exploring is turning waste to energy sources.
GS Platech, a subsidiary of GS Caltex, introduced a technology to dispose of waste using man-made lightning and extracting the gas produced from the process as an energy source in April last year.
The lightning produces extremely high temperatures to melt all sorts of waste, leaving a small amount of slag and pollutants such as dioxin.
GS Platech produces plasma torches that can produce the lightning for 24 hours, emitting 6,000 to 20,000 degree Celsius heat.
The slag can be used to make bricks, mock marble and road-paving materials while the highly pure hydrogen collected from the process could be used at hydrogen fuel cell plants, the company said.