Air Products to buy General Electric’s gasification business

AIR Products has agreed to buy General Electric’s gasification business, which will expand Air Products’ syngas business.

Gasification offers a way to process lower-value feedstocks and convert them (with lower-emissions) into syngas. Air Products bought Shell’s gasification business earlier this year and will now acquire GE’s. The acquisition will include GE’s 50% stake in a syngas joint venture with China’s Shenhua Coal to Liquid & Chemical, which is a subsidiary of China Energy Group. The joint venture formed in 2011 and provides technologies for gasification projects in China.

The GE technology is used for processing solid, liquid, gaseous and blended feedstocks and has been deployed at 240 gasifiers at 90 different sites. Air Products will receive over 1,000 patents relating to GE’s gasification technology.

Seifi Ghasemi, chairman, president and CEO at Air Products, said: “Acquiring GE’s gasification technology and business would complement our other recently-completed gasification technology acquisition and alliance formation. Together, they would give Air Products a broad range of product and service offerings and solutions to provide syngas for chemicals, fuels, power or refining. Together, the transactions would allow us to further extend our onsite industrial gas production model to include syngas supply, and enable cross-selling opportunities for our other technologies and product offerings.”