How big is the domestic propylene gap?

From the perspective of demand, polypropylene is the main driving force for the rapid growth of domestic propylene consumption during the "Twelfth Five-Year Plan" and "Thirteenth Five-Year Plan" period, while the consumption growth rate of other downstream products is relatively stable
.

During the "14th Five-Year Plan" period, as the national economy has entered a stage of high-quality development, the development speed of traditional consumption fields such as automobiles and household appliances has slowed down, and local governments have accelerated the promotion of plastic restriction and plastic ban policies, which have played a negative role in the growth of downstream consumption of propylene , it is expected that the growth rate of propylene demand will drop sharply to about 4% during the "14th Five-Year Plan" period, and by the end of the "14th Five-Year Plan" period, the equivalent consumption will reach about 55.
9 million t
.

As the new production capacity of propylene downstream products in China is mainly polypropylene, and polypropylene is still mostly bulk material, the high-end and differentiated products are insufficient
.
It is expected that during the "14th Five-Year Plan" period, the propylene production capacity will greatly exceed the equivalent consumption, the import gap will continue to narrow, the competition in the industrial chain will be fierce, and the domestic market will have excess capacity for bulk materials and high-end products rely on imports
.

·Analysis of propylene production technology·

Figure 1 Profitability comparison of various propylene processes in China in 2020

With the rapid development of emerging production process routes such as coal-to-propylene and propane dehydrogenation, a diversified pattern of propylene production in China has been formed
.
At present, China's propylene production process is mainly divided into two categories: traditional production process route and emerging propylene production process route
.
The traditional process route is mainly oil-to-propylene route based on steam cracking process and catalytic cracking process
.
The emerging process routes are mainly coal (methanol) to olefins and propane dehydrogenation, olefin disproportionation and olefin cracking as supplementary non-oil to propylene routes
.
In 2020, the newly added propylene production capacity and proportion of various production process routes in China are shown in Table 2
.

The new production capacity of propylene in 2020 is mainly based on oil-to-olefins and propane dehydrogenation processes, of which steam cracking, catalytic cracking and propane dehydrogenation accounted for 52.
33%, 14.
41% and 22.
25% respectively; The proportion of new production capacity in the propylene process fell sharply, accounting for only 9.
96%
.
This is mainly due to the sharp drop in international crude oil prices, which is conducive to large-scale refining and chemical integration projects and the production route of propane dehydrogenation, and puts greater pressure on the coal (methanol)-to-propylene process
.
In the long run, international crude oil will operate at a low level for a long time, and there is great uncertainty in the economics of the coal (methanol) to propylene process route.
At present, many coal chemical projects are suspended, delayed or wait-and-see
.
The olefin projects that have been clearly cancelled in 2020 include Sinopec Great Wall Energy Chemical (Guizhou) Co.
, Ltd.
600,000 t/a olefin project and Shanxi Coking Coal Group Feihong Chemical 600,000 t/a coke oven gas-to-olefin project
.