Market Focus: China's Acetone Industry Stresses "Bin" Bisphenol A

China's acetone industry, which is under development, is currently trying to adjust its application structure. Experts believe that China's acetone industry needs further development and must pay attention to the downstream products, especially the new consumption growth points such as bisphenol A.
It is reported that China's acetone industry has a certain degree of technical content and business scale. In 2004, the production capacity was 290,000 tons and the output was 247,000 tons. Among them, the production capacity and output of the advanced cumene process accounted for 73% and 91%, respectively. The operating rate of four cumene phenol-produced acetone units was used. Both are above 100%. In recent years, with the development of the acetone methyl alcohol methyl methacrylate and coating industries, the consumption of acetone in China has been continuously increasing. The average annual growth rate of imports from 1998 to 2004 was 24.8%. In 2004, the import volume reached 25.8%. 40,000 tons. With the excess of acetone in the world, China's acetone market is thriving and demand continues to grow. As a result, China's acetone market has become the object of competition among countries.
However, the status quo of the downstream application industry is not satisfactory. At present, the main application area of ​​acetone in China is solvent. In 2004, the acetone consumption of solvent accounted for about 70% of the total acetone consumption. The rapid development of the coating industry has made acetone a significant increase in the consumption of solvents in coatings. However, with the wide application of efficient solvent recovery systems, the demand for acetone for solvents will slow down. In addition to being used as a solvent, acetone is also used in the production of antibiotics, hormones, and vitamins. The other major application of acetone is acetone cyanohydrin/methyl methacrylate, which accounted for 17% of total acetone consumption in 2004. MMA is mainly used in automobiles, construction, audio and video products, medicines, household appliances and impact modifiers, PVC processing aids, and modifiers for unsaturated resins. In recent years, the methyl methacrylate raw material route has been gradually diversified. Some producers plan to use isobutylene or ethylene as raw materials to produce methyl methacrylate, which will greatly affect the consumption of acetone in this field.
Bisphenol A is a potentially important application direction of acetone. According to experts from the China Epoxy Resin Industry Association, acetone is one of the main raw materials for the production of bisphenol A, and the production of one ton of bisphenol A consumes approximately 0.27 tons of acetone. In 2004, the consumption of acetone by bisphenol A in China accounted for only the total amount of acetone consumed. 2.2%. Bisphenol A is mainly used for the production of epoxy resin, polycarbonate, flame retardant tetrabromobisphenol A, polysulfone and unsaturated polyester resins. At present, China has three sets of bisphenol A production facilities. In 2004, the production capacity was 50,000 tons, the output was about 40,000 tons, and the consumption of acetone was 12,000 tons. At present, domestic BPA is mainly produced by Bluestar New Material Wuxi Resin Factory, and the output is far from meeting domestic demand. It needs a lot of imports every year. In 2004, the equivalent consumption of bisphenol A in the major downstream products of bisphenol A in China exceeded 1 million tons, equivalent to nearly 300,000 tons of acetone equivalent consumption.
Judging from the situation in China, the future development of the acetone industry is in new areas such as bisphenol A. Adjusting the application structure is a top priority. Although the situation on a global scale shows that the downstream epoxy resin of BPA and bisphenol A in the downstream of acetone has limited growth, it is in strong development in China and has even become a puller for the global industry. It is reported that in the next three years, China's epoxy resin production and consumption can reach one-third of the global, bisphenol A production capacity and production can be increased from the current 50,000 tons / year to more than 30 tons / year, the acetone The increase in consumption is decisive.