Ascend Performance Materials experienced a plant-wide outage that caused unauthorized emissions at its Chocolate Bayou, Texas, chemical facility on Monday, the company said in a filing Tuesday with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.
Ascend experienced an upset, tripping units off line and allowing an unknown amount of acrylonitrile, hydrogen cyanide and acrolein to be vented into the atmosphere through a protective device, the company said in a separate filing Tuesday with the National Response Center.
Calls to Ascend media relations for an update on the status of the facilities were not returned immediately.
Chocolate Bayou has an estimated ACN production capacity of 1 billion lbs/year.
Ascend had restarted the AN 7 unit at Chocolate Bayou in early May after a planned turnaround, sources said.
