Is degradable plastic PBAT still competitive?

Biodegradable plastics are considered an effective way to solve the problem of single-use plastic waste polluti.

Degradable plastics are booming in China

The annual global plastic production is as high as 350 million tons, and China is close to 100 million to.

Based on the protection of the common living environment of human beings, various countries have issued plastic restrictions and ba.

Biodegradable plastics are considered an effective way to solve the problem of single-use plastic waste polluti.

In terms of demand, in 2020, Northeast Asia represented by China is the world's largest biodegradable plastics market, accounting for more than 60% of global consumption, followed by Europe (25%) and North America (10.

It is estimated that by 2025, the demand for degradable plastics in China will reach 3 million tons, but by then, the production capacity of degradable plastics in China will exceed 5 million tons/year, of which the newly planned capacity of PBAT alone will exceed 3 million tons/year, followed by Added capacity from PLA and P.

PGA is an ideal completely biodegradable plastic with the characteristics of microbial degradation and water degradati.

Due to its good tensile strength, toughness, ductility and heat resistance, PBAT is one of the best degradable plastics currently on the market and the largest source of degradable plastics in China in the futu.

Recently, major companies have launched PBAT, such as Hualu Hengsheng 30,000 tons/year PBAT, Donghua Tianye 400,000 tons/year PBAT, Dongfang Shenghong 180,000 tons/year PBAT, Yongrong Holdings 500,000 tons/year PBAT , Shaanxi Coal Group 120,000 tons/year PBAT, Huayi New Materials 300,000 tons/year PB.

PBAT is synthesized from BDO, PTA and adipic acid .

From the perspective of production cost, BDO accounts for 63% of the cost of the three raw materials, and accounts for 56% of the income of PB.

Whoever wins BDO wins the world

In 2021, the domestic BDO production capacity is about 3 million tons, and the consumption is about 7 million to.

From the process point of view, the technologies for producing BDO include acetylenic aldehyde method, maleic anhydride method, butadiene acetyl oxidation method, allyl alcohol method and dichlorobutene hydrolysis meth.

The latter three processes have the problems of large investment, many by-products and difficult producti.

The acetylene aldehyde method is the most mature process route for the preparation of BDO, using acetylene and formaldehyde as raw materials; the source of acetylene raw materials is divided into the calcium carbide method to acetylene and the natural gas to acetylene route, both of which are currently mature and applied process metho.

However, the investment of butane maleic anhydride hydrogenation method is large, and butane as the main raw material has a large external dependen.

Overseas, BDO is mainly produced through the natural gas-to-acetylene rou.

In China, the vast majority of BDO is based on calcium carbide meth.

As an important clean energy, natural gas has many restrictions on the development of natural gas chemical industry, and new natural gas-acetylene-BDO units are rare; under the dual-carbon policy, the approval of new calcium carbide production capacity is not easy, and the production process of calcium carbide consumes a lot of money Electric power and calcium carbide are made from coal, and the approval of new coal chemical projects will also be gradually tighten.

If BDO is produced by external mining of calcium carbide, the complete cost is about 13,600 yuan / ton, and the complete cost of integrated production of PBAT is 17,600 yuan / t.

However, the author believes that with the continuous implementation of the dual-carbon policy in the future, the production cost of calcium carbide will be further increas.

In addition, the production capacity of new batches of calcium carbide will be very limited, and the production capacity will only increase from 40 million tons/year in 2020 to 4500/year in 202 10,000 tons, but the newly added 5 million tons/year assumes that the operating rate is 80%, the new output is less than 4 million tons/year, and only meets the demand for new PVC (the new PVC needs about 5 million tons/year for calcium carbide) left and righ.

As mentioned above, 3 million tons/year of PBAT corresponds to 6 million tons/year of BDO production, and the demand for calcium carbide is 8 million tons/year (13 tons of calcium carbide is required to produce 1 ton of BDO), which also means BDO also has to compete with PVC for calcium carbide resourc.

However, to prepare BDO by the hydrogenation of n-butane maleic anhydride (14 tons of n-butane is required to produce 1 ton of BDO), it needs to rely on external butane as a raw materi.

For propane dehydrogenation enterprises, it actually has a natural advanta.

Because according to industry practice, PDH companies have to purchase butane while purchasing propane to reduce the overall logistics co.

For a long time, many PDH factories have been troubled by the deep processing of butane, and the strong demand of PBAT is making the prospect gradually cle.

At present, although the price of butane is at a high level, for the high BDO price (22,000 yuan/ton), the complete cost of BDO obtained by hydrogenating butane maleic anhydride is close to 14,000 yuan/t.

The complete cost of the integrated production of PBAT is about 17,800 yuan / t.

Compared with the PBAT market price (21,500 yuan / ton), the pre-tax profit margin is still as high as 1
But for butane, it was originally mainly used for blending with propane as fuel dema.

With the intensification of the global energy crisis, butane gas will gradually rise, and the demand for chemical industry will continue to increase, such as propane cracking, PBAT The demand for fuel is still increasing, and the price of butane will gradually deviate from the fuel properties in the futu.

In the future, for the PBAT industry, the real competitiveness lies in having low-cost integrated BDO resources: one is to have supporting calcium carbide resources; the other is to obtain stable butane resources based on PDH devic.

Only by developing PBAT based on resource advantages can we obtain a sufficiently strong market competitivene.

The author is the editorial board member of "China Petroleum and Chemical Industry" magazine