On May 28, BP announced that it had reached an agreement with Dongying Weilian Chemical Co., Ltd. to license its latest generation PTA (purified terephthalic acid) production technology. This is BP’s third PTA technology licensing project in China following the successful launch of the Zhejiang Xinfengming project.
BP stated that the key advantages of BP’s patented PTA production technology have been fully proven at BP’s Zhuhai PTA flagship factory. It has significant advantages in terms of operating costs and capital investment, and can help companies receive higher returns on investment. At the same time, the heat energy generated by this technology during the production process can be recovered and used for waste heat power generation. The excess power can also be supplied to the external power grid to help meet local energy needs. In addition, BP’s anaerobic wastewater treatment technology also has strong processing capabilities and is beneficial to ecological and environmental protection.
Dongying Weilian Chemical Co., Ltd. plans to build a 2.5 million tons/year plant in the Dongying Port Economic Development Zone Purified terephthalic acid and supporting engineering projects, with a total investment of 4,604.05 million yuan, and the project covers an area of 700 acres. This project will be beneficially complementary to Dongying United Petrochemical’s existing refinery and PX (paraxylene) production capacity, and will help the company develop in the petrochemical industry chain. Weilian Chemical launched a global bidding in 2019 and selected BP’s patented PTA production technology amid fierce market competition. The project is currently in the design stage and is scheduled to be completed in the first half of 2020, and is expected to be put into production in the second quarter of 2022.
With the injection of new PTA processes, processing fees are about to face a “short-edged battle”!
Since last year, with the production of Xinfengming 2.2 million tons and Hengli 2.5 million tons phase four units, larger scale and lower energy and material consumption have made Xinfengming The competitiveness of the device has been significantly improved.
With the continuous expansion of the device production capacity base and the application of new technologies, raw materials and power consumption continue to decrease, new PTA devices It has superior performance in terms of cost control and profitability; while the old equipment was limited by the technology at that time. Although technical improvements were continued to reduce costs and increase efficiency after completion, the profitability level was still not the same as that of new equipment.
As shown in the table, the processing costs of various types of devices vary greatly, especially new devices benefit from The use of new technologies has made convenient progress in material and energy consumption, directly crushing various old devices: on the one hand, the reaction efficiency has gradually improved, the consumption of PX has been reduced from 0.660 to 0.648 (theoretical consumption is 0.639), and the consumption of acetic acid has also been reduced from 0.04 to 0.029. On the other hand, in terms of energy consumption, the utilization efficiency of steam and reaction heat has been improved. The steam consumption per unit cost is decreasing but the power generation is increasing. Especially in the fourth phase of Hengli’s production, it is said that it can generate 100KWH of external power. The energy consumption The reduction in aspects can be described as earth-shaking.
Depreciation, amortization and financial expenses are different among each device. For old devices or depreciation has been completed, the unit cost of management expenses or financial expenses of large companies may be lower, so In 2020, PTA processing fees may need to test the marginal benefit processing cost. It is also the year when Class A devices are gradually phased out. The processing fees may fluctuate between 300-500.
In short, although the current overall operating rate of the PTA device is not bad, as the processing price difference is further compressed, for example, 400 yuan/ton, there will definitely be maintenance or repair of the PTA device. Entering a state of long-term suspension, the PX and PTA industries will begin to reshuffle. In the future, old equipment or equipment lacking supporting industrial chains will be forced to park frequently until they are shut down for a long time. </p
