After the Facilities Engineering division had established itself as a reliable partner to act as general contractor for turnkey facilities - to which Linde’s involvement in the chemical furnace builder Selas-Kirchner GmbH in 1975 made a contribution - the TVT segment could benefit from new business opportunities without restriction: The eastern policy of 1969 made by the Social-Liberal coalition opened up the markets of the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries in the 1970s; two oil crises (1973/74 and 1979/80) and the burgeoning environmental consciousness - the first report by the Club of Rome "The Limits to Growth" appeared in 1972 - led to a sharply rising demand for environmentally-friendly technologies. And Linde AG took advantage of these opportunities.
After the initial pilot installation of an ethylene plant for Veba Oil in Scholven, Germany, incoming orders concentrated on ethylene and nitrogen plants for plastics production until far into the 1970s. Beginning in the mid-1970s, however, energy-saving technologies and facilities for cleaning bodies of water, wastewater and exhaust gases became increasingly important. Several major German cities - Bremerhaven, Karlsruhe, Nuremberg, Munich, Peine - received "Lindox" and "Lindpor" plants for biological wastewater treatment using oxygen. In 1982, Linde AG handed over what was, at that time, the world’s largest PSA hydrogen cleaning plant to Union Rheinische Braunkohlen Kraftstoff AG in Wesseling, near Cologne.