MOSCOW (MRC) -- Celanese Corporation, a global chemical and specialty materials company, has announced that its Clear Lake, Texas integrated chemical manufacturing facility will begin utilizing recycled carbon dioxide (CO2) as an alternative feedstock in the production of methanol, a key raw material in the manufacture of numerous acetyls products, including acetic acid, vinyl acetate monomer (VAM), ethyl acetate and other derivatives, as per the company's press release.
This carbon capture and reuse process is expected to produce sustainable methanol with a high capital efficiency at competitive pricing via an expansion of the company’s Fairway joint venture. The methanol production unit at the Clear Lake facility, operated as Fairway Methanol LLC, is a manufacturing joint venture between Celanese and Mitsui & Co., Ltd., and will contribute to the sustainability targets of both companies.
Once fully operational, it is expected that by using by-product CO2 in the production of methanol, after a low capital capacity expansion, the 1.62 million metric ton Fairway production unit will eliminate the waste equivalent of approximately 39,000 automobiles per year from U.S. highways, thereby displacing approximately 180,000 metric tons of CO2. Furthermore, an estimated 60 percent of currently vented process CO2 from the entire Clear Lake site will be transformed into sustainable methanol.
CO2 capture and reuse further demonstrates the company’s commitment to sustainability and the potential impact to the broader Celanese portfolio as the company is both a consumer of upstream products and a supplier of sustainable materials to other products within the portfolio. As such, the benefits of CO2 capture and reuse can be allocated or derivatized to the company’s engineered materials, acetyl chain or acetate tow product offerings.
As MRC reported earlier, in H2 February, 2021, Celanese declared force majeure on its products in the Americas and EMEA region due to the severe winter weather that has heavily curtailed US petrochemicals and refinery production and operations on the US Gulf Coast.
According to MRC's DataScope report, January EVA imports to Russia rose only by 0,07% year on year to 3,084 tonnes from 3,087 tonnes a year earlier, and overall imports of this grade of ethylene copolymer into the Russian Federation dropped in January-December 2020 by 3,41% year on year to 38,170 tonnes (39,520 tonnes in 2019).
Celanese Corporation is a global technology leader in the production of differentiated chemistry solutions and specialty materials used in most major industries and consumer applications. Based in Dallas, Celanese employs approximately 7,700 employees worldwide and had 2020 net sales of USD5.7 billion.
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