MOSCOW (MRC) -- Japan-based Asahi Kasei Chemicals (AKC) is planning to build a new validation plant at the Mizushima manufacturing complex at Kurashiki, for its newly developed diphenyl carbonate (DPC) production process, as per Chemicals Technology.
The plant, which is scheduled for start-up in January 2017, will produce up to 1,000t per year of DPC, a monomer used in polycarbonate (PC) production, through dialkyl carbonate (DRC).
AKC has built a successful business worldwide, licensing its non-phosgene process for PC using carbon dioxide (CO2) as feedstock. Validation of the new process will help the company to licence it as the intermediate process for DPC, strengthening the competitiveness of the licensing business.
Development of the newly developed process and construction of the validation plant have been supported by grants provided by Japan's New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO).
The new process uses a catalyst developed by the company to obtain DRC from CO2 and alcohol, with DPC obtained from DRC and phenol in a second step.
As the second step also yields alcohol needed for the first step, the only starting materials are CO2 and phenol, therefore the new process provides better freedom in selection of a plant location than the non-phosgene PC process currently used by AKC, which relies on ethylene oxide (EO) as feedstock.
The new process is said to be more energy-efficient, enabling substantially reduced production costs.
As MRC reported earlier, Asahi Kasei’s (Tokyo, Japan) Fibers division will expand production capacity for polypropylene spunbond nonwovens in Thailand at its subsidiary Asahi Kasei Spunbond (Thailand) Co. AKST will add a new production line of 20,000 metric tons per year capacity which, combined with its existing production line, will double its capacity for spunbond nonwovens to 40,000 m.t/yr. The investment for the capacity expansion is approximately USD5 billion, with a scheduled startup of November 2015.
Asahi Kasei Corporation is a global Japanese chemical company. Its main products are chemicals and materials science.
MRC