Quick answer: Methyl methacrylate economics depend on the selected process and local feedstock chain. ACH and C4-based routes differ in raw materials, by-products, equipment, safety burden and variable cost, so conclusions must use current site-specific data.
In my opinion, value analysis is an important method to analyse the market, which can quickly understand the logic of value transmission in the industrial chain, and predict the direction of cost transmission according to the logic of transmission, so as to predict the market trend of commodities. Among them, the study of cost becomes an important part of the value analysis of the industry chain.
Therefore, I will continue to analyse the value of the chemical industry chain, and I hope that through this kind of analysis, we can make the industry run more healthily and the value distribution more reasonable.
MMA, known as methyl methacrylate, is an important raw material for the production of polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA), which is also commonly known as acrylic.The reason why MMA has been widely noticed by the industry is because of the high-performance material properties of downstream PMMA.
I found that, with the rapid development of China’s new materials industry, downstream optical, electronic, automotive applications of new materials have received a higher degree of attention, but also in recent years there has been a booming trend. One of the downstream PMMA applications in the optical field in the characteristics of its PMMA attention in a substantial increase. PMMA can be used in liquid crystal display materials, automotive instrumentation and lighting materials, architectural decoration materials, advertising light box materials and so on.
It can also be said that it is because of the development of the industry of PMMA, pushing back the development of the MMA industry chain. According to the survey, there are three mainstream production processes of MMA, namely acetone cyanohydrin method (ACH method), ethylene carbonylation method, isobutylene oxidation method (C4 method), and at present, China’s producers are mainly ACH and C4 method, and there is no industrial production unit for ethylene carbonylation method.
Acetone cyanohydrin method is the earliest industrialised MMA production process, which takes hydrocyanic acid, a by-product of acrylonitrile, as raw material, and generates acetone cyanohydrin under the action of alkaline catalyst (diethylamine), and the generated acetone cyanohydrin reacts with sulphuric acid to generate methacrylamide sulphate, and then hydrolysed and then esterified with methanol to generate crude MMA and acidic aqueous mixture. The crude MMA is distilled to produce MMA products, the unreacted methanol is recovered and recycled, and the residual liquid after the reaction enters the recovery section to recover ammonium bisulfate. In other words, ACH method is a production process using acetone and hydrocyanic acid as raw materials.
The isobutylene method is referred to as C4 method, firstly oxidize isobutylene to make methacrolein, then oxidize it to make methacrylic acid, and finally esterify it with methanol to generate MMA.At present, the domestic C4 routes are all three-steps, 1, isobutylene/tert-butyl alcohol in the function of Mo-Bi catalyst and air gas-phase oxidation reaction to generate MA, the conversion rate of isobutylene is more than 95%, and the selectivity of MA (mole fraction) is more than 80%; 2, MA selectivity is more than 80%; 2, the reaction of MA is more than 80%; 2, the reaction of MA is more than 80%. The MA oxidation reaction adopts phosphomolybdenum catalyst, and alkali metals are added to increase the thermal stability, regulate the activity and increase the surface area of the catalyst, and the conversion rate of MA can reach 98% after multi-stage oxidation reaction; 3. The esterification of MAA generates MMA, and the esterification reaction of MAA can be either a liquid-phase reaction or a gas-phase reaction. In other words, the C4 method is based on isobutylene as the main raw material.
The ethylene carbonylation method, also known as the BASF method, consists of the following processes: carbonyl synthesis, hydroxyl aldehyde reaction, oxidation reaction and esterification reaction. Firstly, ethylene is carbonylated with carbon dioxide and hydrogen to generate propionaldehyde, then propionaldehyde is condensed with formaldehyde under the condition of acetic acid and dimethylamine catalysis to generate MAL and water, and MAL is oxidised to generate MAAMAA After cooling, it is reacted with methanol under the catalytic condition to generate MMA Crude MMA has a total yield of about 90%. In other words, the main raw material of ethylene carbonylation method is ethylene.
Therefore, our study of MMA value chain should follow the latitude of the following industry chains, which are ACH method production value chain, C4 method production value chain, PMMA method production value chain and ethylene carbonylation method production value chain.
Industry chain I: ACH method MMA value chain
In the production process of MMA by ACH method, the main raw materials are acetone and hydrocyanic acid, of which hydrocyanic acid is produced through the by-production of acrylonitrile, and there are also auxiliary materials, methanol, so the industry generally uses acetone, acrylonitrile and methanol as the cost of calculating the composition of raw materials. The unit consumption of 0.69 tonnes of acetone and 0,32 tonnes of acrylonitrile as well as 0.35 tonnes of methanol is calculated, in the cost composition of MMA by ACH method, the cost of acetone accounts for the largest proportion, followed by hydrocyanic acid produced by by-product of acrylonitrile, and methanol accounts for the smallest proportion.
According to the price correlation test of acetone, methanol and acrylonitrile in the past three years, it is found that the correlation of ACH MMA with acetone is about 19%, the correlation with methanol is about 57%, and the correlation according to acrylonitrile is about 18%. It can be seen that this is a gap with the cost share in MMA, in which the high share of acetone for the cost of MMA, can not be reflected in the price fluctuations of its price fluctuations on the price of ACH method of MMA, while the price fluctuations of methanol, the price of MMA have an impact on the price of MMA, which is greater than that of acetone.
However, the cost share of methanol is only around 7%, and the cost share of acetone is around 26%. For the value chain study of MMA, it is more important to look at the cost changes of acetone.
For the cost composition of acetone, the main raw materials are pure benzene, propylene, of which pure benzene in the variable cost composition of acetone accounted for the largest proportion of propylene in the second place, so for the cost fluctuations of acetone, mainly from the price fluctuations of pure benzene. However, as acetone is co-produced by phenol and ketone plant, the impact of acetone cost depends more on the integrated cost composition of phenol and phenol ketone plant.
To summarise, the value chain of ACH MMA mainly comes from the cost fluctuations of acetone and methanol, with acetone having the greatest impact on the value of MMA. The value chain of acetone refers more to the cost changes of pure benzene, propylene and phenol and ketone integration projects.
Industry chain II: C4 method MMA value chain
For the value chain of C4 MMA, the raw materials are isobutylene and methanol, of which isobutylene is a high-purity isobutylene product, which comes from MTBE cracking production. Methanol is an industrialised methanol product, which comes from coal production.
According to the cost composition of C4 MMA, the variable costs are 0.82 for isobutylene and 0.35 for methanol. With the progress of production technology, the industry has already reduced the unit consumption to 0.8, which reduces the cost of C4 MMA to a certain extent. The rest are fixed costs, such as water, electricity and gas costs, financial costs, sewage treatment costs and others.
In this, the share of high-purity isobutylene in the cost of MMA is about 58%, and the share of methanol in the cost of MMA is about 6%. It can be seen that isobutylene is the largest variable cost in C4 MMA, in which the price fluctuation of isobutylene has a huge impact on the cost of C4 MMA.
The impact on the value chain of high-purity isobutylene can be traced back to the price fluctuations of MTBE, which consumes 1.57 units and constitutes more than 80% of the cost of high-purity isobutylene. The cost of MTBE comes from methanol and pre-ether C4, of which the composition of pre-ether C4 can be linked to the value chain of raw materials.
In addition, it should be noted that, at present, high-purity isobutylene can be produced by dehydration of tert-butanol, and some enterprises will adopt tert-butanol as the basis for MMA cost calculation, and the unit consumption of tert-butanol is 1.52. According to the calculation of tert-butanol of 6,200 yuan/tonne, tert-butanol accounts for about 70% of the proportion of the cost of MMA, which is larger than that of isobutylene.
That is to say, if tert-butanol price linkage is adopted, the fluctuation of the value chain of C4 MMA, the influence of tert-butanol is more important than that of isobutene.
To sum up, in C4 MMA, the influence weight on the value fluctuation is ranked from high to low: tert-butanol, isobutene, MTBE, methanol, crude oil.
Chain 3: Ethylene carbonylation MMA value chain
There is no industrial production of ethylene carbonylation MMA in China, so it is impossible to speculate the impact of value fluctuation through actual industrial production. However, based on the unit consumption of ethylene in ethylene carbonylation, ethylene is the main cost impact for this process of MMA with a cost composition of more than 85%.
The transmission logic for the value of ethylene can be divided into the naphtha cracking chain and the coal chain. Naphtha cracking to produce ethylene cost calculation, due to the characteristics of the cracking device multi-product, the current calculation method and formula is not uniform, in which naphtha for the cost of ethylene accounted for the largest proportion.
And coal to ethylene cost composition, coal for coal to ethylene cost accounted for more than 85%, is the largest cost composition. However, as ethylene is a key indicator of the level of China’s chemical industry, the pricing of ethylene comes more from the fluctuation of foreign prices, that is, the fluctuation of crude oil prices. Therefore, the cost of China’s coal-based ethylene, although coal accounts for the largest proportion of the cost of ethylene, but more reference to the development of oil prices.
Industry Chain 4: PMMA Value Chain
PMMA, as the main downstream product of MMA, can be used in liquid crystal display materials, building installation materials, advertising industry, daily necessities industry, etc., which has a wide range of applications. In addition, the downstream of MMA can also produce resin, emulsion, ACR and other fields. Among them, the downstream as the production of PMMA, the annual consumption of MMA accounts for more than 70%.
Figure 2 China PMMA industry chain flow chart
I look at the composition of the value chain according to PMMA, in which the consumption of MMA unit consumption is 0.93, MMA according to the calculation of 13,400 yuan / tonne, PMMA according to the calculation of 15,800 yuan / tonne, MMA in the variable cost of PMMA accounted for about 79%, which is relatively high.
That is to say, the price fluctuation of MMA has a greater impact on the value fluctuation of PMMA, which is a strong correlation effect. According to the correlation between the two price fluctuations in the past three years, the correlation between the two is more than 82%, which is a strong correlation effect. Therefore, the price fluctuation of MMA will cause the price of PMMA to fluctuate in the same direction with high probability.
Finally, I would like to say, due to the ACH method of MMA there is hydrocyanic acid involved, for the corrosive nature of the equipment and the threshold of entry are relatively high, leading to the future MMA project put into operation, most of them are concentrated in the C4 method of production process. Therefore, the supply of C4 MMA will be more and more, and the cost of C4 method is more from the tert-butanol, isobutylene and methanol. Therefore, the research on the value chain of MMA should be more focused on the fluctuation level of variable raw material cost of C4 method.