In recent years, although China's aromatic hydrocarbon production capacity has increased significantly and reached a certain scale, it still cannot meet the actual market demand and needs to continue to grow bigger and stronger. This is the consensus reached by experts at the Sinopec Aromatic Hydrocarbon Group Meeting recently held at Yangzi Petrochemical.
Aromatic hydrocarbons are one of the main operations of China's petrochemical industry. Aromatic hydrocarbons and ethylene are also the core production facilities of petrochemicals, and are the two leading product chains of downstream chemical fiber and chemical industry of oil refining. The main products of aromatics are benzene, p-xylene and o-xylene. P-xylene is the main raw material for the production of PTA (pure terephthalic acid), and PTA is the main raw material for the production of chemical fiber. Benzene and o-xylene are important Organic chemical raw materials.
According to statistics, in 2005 China's benzene production reached a record 3.06 million tons. Before 2004, due to the small production capacity of domestic benzene downstream products, it was basically able to meet the demand and had some exports. However, in the past two years, the production capacity of benzene downstream products in China has grown rapidly, especially with the large-scale construction of styrene, phenol, aniline, cyclohexanone and other production facilities, the demand for benzene market has increased significantly. Therefore, starting from 2004, China's benzene-exporting countries have become pure importing countries. In 2005, the import volume reached 255,000 tons. It is expected that domestic benzene will still not meet the downstream market demand in the next few years.
In recent years, China's chemical fiber and PTA production capacity has expanded at a rapid rate, while the development of paraxylene has lagged behind. With the start of production of a number of new PTA installations, the contradiction between insufficient supply of paraxylene in China has become more prominent. In 2005, the output of paraxylene in China was 2.23 million tons, and the import volume reached 1.6 million tons. It has become the largest importer of paraxylene in the world. It is expected that in 2010, China's import of paraxylene will reach 2.5 million tons.
In 2005, the output of paraxylene from Sinopec’s subsidiaries was 1.89 million tons, accounting for 84% of the country’s total production. It is reported that Qingdao LG Chemical's 700,000-ton/year paraxylene plant will be put into production. CNOOC's Huizhou 900,000 tons/year paraxylene plant is under construction. PetroChina's 1 million tons/year paraxylene plant in Urumqi has already started up. Will inevitably lead to the decline of the market share of the original enterprise, and the competition of aromatics, especially paraxylene, will become more intense. Under this situation, Sinopec's 12 aromatics production and scientific research and design organizations have organized the aromatic hydrocarbons cooperative group. Through exchanges and learning, they will learn about the current status and development trend of aromatics technologies at home and abroad and accelerate technological development to increase China's aromatics production. Technology and management level.