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MOSCOW (MRC) -- Mitsubishi has
announced the startup of commercial operations at its new USD1-billion methanol
and dimethyl ether (DME) joint venture (JV) facility at La Brea, Trinidad and
Tobago, said Chemweek.
The
plant has a nameplate production capacity for 1 million metric tons/year (MMt/y)
of methanol and 20,000 metric tons/year of DME.
The plant began operating
commercially on 18 December 2020, it says. The facility is operated by Caribbean
Gas Chemical Ltd. (CGCL), a JV of Mitsubishi Gas Chemical (MGC), Mitsubishi
Corp., Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Engineering (MHIE), National Gas Co. (NGC) of
Trinidad and Tobago, and Massy Holdings. Feedstock for the plant is sourced
primarily from domestic natural gas fields.
The CGCL JV was established
in March 2013, with shareholders MGC and Mitsubishi each owning 26.25%, NGC
holding 20%, MHIE 17.5%, and Massy 10%. Mitsubishi Corp. currently handles
around 2.5 MMt/y of methanol, an amount equivalent to approximately 10% of
global offshore trading, it says. Global demand for methanol is approximately 81
MMt/y, with that total expected to increase steadily in step with GDP growth, it
says.
The final investment decision for the plant was taken by Mitsubishi
in September 2015 after the three Mitsubishi group companies signed an initial
agreement with NGC and Massy in April that year. MGC provided its process
technology for the plant, while MHI built the facility under an engineering,
procurement, and construction contract. Commercial production was scheduled
originally for March 2019. MGC, Mitsubishi, and Massy will sell the output
globally.
Earlier this month Methanex (Vancouver, British Columbia,
Canada) announced it would continue to idle indefinitely its 875,000-metric
tons/year Titan methanol facility at Couva, Trinidad, after halting production
at the plant in March 2020 due to the COVID-19-related downturn in manufacturing
activity worldwide. Methanex’s other methanol facility in Trinidad, the
1.822-MMt/y Atlas plant, also at Couva, continues to operate with a natural-gas
supply agreement due to expire in 2024.
As MRC reported earlier,
in December 2020, MCC acquired a ‘greenfield’ property at a large integrated
site on the Mississippi River in Geismar, Louisiana, the US. It also plans to
advance its feasibility study for the design and construction of a 350,000mt
Methyl Methacrylate (MMA) plant, which will be based on its proprietary ALPHA
technology. Currently, the project is in the early engineering stage and the
final investment decision (FiD) is expected to take place in early 2022. If the
project gets approval, the plant would commence production in 2025.
The
main application, consuming approximately 75% MMA, is in the production of
polymethyl methacrylate acrylic plastics (PMMA). Methyl methacrylate is also
used to produce methyl methacrylate-butadiene-styrene copolymer (MBS), used as a
modifier for polyvinyl chloride (PVC).
According to MRC's ScanPlast report,
Russia's overall PVC production reached 891,200 tonnes in the first eleven
months of 2020, down by 0.3% year on year. However, two producers managed to
increase their PVC output. |
