Sentence Correction (SC) | The Petroleum distillates were so viscous,.. MGMAT

In MGMAT, there is a question to fix the following setence:
The petroleum distillates were so viscous, the engineers had to heat the pipe by nearly 30 degrees.

The solution as per MGMAT is:
The petroleum distillates were so viscous that the engineers had to heat the pipe by nearly 30 degrees.

Is the following sentence grammatically and meaning-wise correct?

" The petroleum distillates were so viscous; therefore, the engineers had to heat the pipe by nearly 30 degrees."

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