Technology
Butene is a
by-product of the process to produce butadiene and raw materials of acrylic
resins in the petrochemical industrial complex, and it is used mainly for fuel.
Asahi Kasei, one of Japan’s leading chemical companies, developed a technology to react butene with oxygen to extract butadiene at a low cost. Butadiene is
used for high-performance synthetic rubber (S-SBR: Solution Styrene-Butadiene
Rubber) for low rolling resistance tires and acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene (ABS)
resins for the body of LCD TVs. Demand for butadiene will supposedly grow
rapidly, but it can be produced only from naphtha at present. Japan’s domestic
butadiene production was about 935,000 tons in 2011. It has been hard to extract
butadiene from butene and other chemical products because of cost problem.
The company will
build a mass production plant with an investment of 5-10 billion yen in 2014. Supply
of butadiene is growing tight, and butadiene was a little below 4,000 dollars
per ton in Asia at the end of February this year that is very close to the
highest price recorded last summer. It has become a critical issue for synthetic
rubber makers and synthetic resin makers alike to secure butadiene. Asahi Kasei
will build its first plant in a foreign country in Singapore in 2013. It is the
world’s second largest producer of high-performance synthetic rubber following
JSR.
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