MOSCOW (MRC) -- Ningxia Baofeng Energy has taken off-stream its (methanol-to-olefins) MTO unit for a maintenance turnaround, as per Apic-online.
A Polymerupdate source in China informed that, the company halted operations at the unit on July 1, 2020. The unit is likely to remain shut till end-July, 2020.
Located at Yinchuan, Ningxia, China, the MTO unit has an ethylene production capacity of 300,000 mt/year and propylene capacity of 300,000 mt/year.
As MRC wrote previously, in June 2019, Johnson Matthey (JM) announced that Ningxia Baofeng Energy Group had "successfully" commissioned a new methanol plant at Ningxia Baofeng's 600,000-t/y coal-to-olefins complex in Ningxia Province, China. The 6,600-t/d methanol unit, based on technology from JM, utilizes syngas feedstock and combines advanced JM catalysts to produce stabilized methanol, which is used to produce olefins in a downstream facility.
Ethylene and propylene are feedstocks for producing polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP).
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 595,170 tonnes in the first five month of 2020, up by 10% year on year. Deliveries of all ethylene polymers, except for linear low density polyethylene (LLDPE), rose partially because of an increase in capacity utilisation at ZapSibNeftekhim. At the same time, PP shipments to the Russian market was 457,930 tonnes in January-May 2020 (calculated by the formula production minus export plus import). Deliveris of exclusively PP random copolymer increased.
MRC