On December 1, at the Lianyungang Petrochemical Industrial Base in Jiangsu Province, Shenghong Sierbang Petrochemical's fourth 260,000-tonne/year acrylonitrile unit commenced operation, producing high-grade acrylonitrile. This brings Shenghong's acrylonitrile production capacity to 1.04 million tonnes/year, making it the world's largest acrylonitrile production base.
Ten years of hard work: from the first private enterprise to the first in China and first in the world
What is acrylonitrile?
The chemical formula of acrylonitrile is C3H3N, which is an important raw material for the three major synthetic materials (plastic, synthetic rubber and synthetic fiber). Its upstream raw materials are acrylic and liquid ammonia, and the downstream is mainly ABS (acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene) resin, acrylic, acrylamide, carbon fiber, etc. It is widely used in aerospace, wind power generation, automobile, machinery, electronics and other fields.
As a basic raw material, acrylonitrile is multi-use and wide-scale. China previously needed to import a large number of products. From 2011 to 2013, China imported more than 500,000 tonnes of acrylonitrile every year, with an import dependence exceeding 30%.
Basic raw materials are facing bottlenecks and shortcomings, making a "strong foundation" one of the key words for China's economic development. In May 2010, the State Council issued Several Opinions on Encouraging and Guiding the Healthy Development of Private Investment ("New Article 36"), encouraging and guiding private enterprises to develop strategic emerging industries such as "new energy and new materials
"At that time, we were building an alcohol-based multi-production project. When planning the extension of the methanol-based olefin industry chain, we focused on the national policy orientation, analyzed the market development trend, and finally aimed at acrylonitrile. The goal was to meet domestic market demand and promote import substitution”, said Song Guojun, deputy general manager of Shenghong Sierbang Petrochemical after experiencing the development process of Shenghong's four sets of acrylonitrile devices, remembering it vividly. "On March 18, 2013, the construction of Shenghong's first set of 260,000 tonnes/year acrylonitrile device started.”
Impressing him more was Shenghong's courage to make decisions in the field of acrylonitrile. With the pressure he faced, at that time, the difficulties were great, since the investment in acrylonitrile devices is huge, and no private enterprises had entered this field before. “At the same time, there was a shortage of talents in the acrylonitrile industry, and we needed to cultivate technical teams from the beginning”, Song Guojun said.
On the one hand, it is to accelerate the construction of equipment and process optimization, and on the other hand, it is to cultivate the recruited college graduates from 2013 toward technical skills - a time which came on December 18, 2015. With the successful operation of Shenghong's first 260,000 tonnes/year acrylonitrile unit, the first private enterprise to enter the acrylonitrile industry was born. This unit, number one among private enterprises, also set a world record in the acrylonitrile industry in the future - a continuous operation for 949 days.
Since 2016, information as to China’s annual domestic production capacity, including Shenghong’s, has been made available. China's imports of acrylonitrile have been greatly reduced, while the dependence on imports has also been significantly reduced. In 2016 and 2017, China's acrylonitrile imports were 306,100 tonnes and 270,800 tonnes, respectively, while import dependence was 13.7% and 12% respectively.
While promoting import substitution, represented by Shenghong, Chinese acrylonitrile enterprises have also accelerated the pace of participating in the global market and filling the gap in overseas markets.
Shenghong advancing
In March 2013, the construction of the first 260,000 tonnes/year acrylonitrile unit began.
In December 2015, the first 260,000 tonnes/year acrylonitrile unit was put into production, becoming the first private enterprise to enter the acrylonitrile industry.
In September 2019, the second 260,000 tonnes/year acrylonitrile unit was put into production, and the production capacity became the leader in China.
In December 2021, the third 60,000 tonnes/year acrylonitrile unit was put into production, ranking first in China.
In December 2023, the fourth 260,000 tonnes/year acrylonitrile unit was put into production, ranking first in the world.
Strong foundation of industry: solid chain, fusion chain, strong chain "stabilizer"
High strength, corrosion resistance, fatigue resistance, high temperature resistance... Carbon fiber, which combines many excellent properties, is known as the "king of new materials". It has a broad prospect for "lightweight" applications in wind power generation, aerospace, automobile manufacturing and other high-tech fields, and the main raw material for the production of carbon fiber is acrylonitrile.
In 2022, China's demand for carbon fiber accounted for about 55.1% of the world, whereby about 45,000 tonnes of domestic carbon fiber exceeded imports for the first time. In recent years, the demand for carbon fiber has increased greatly and the domestic substitution has accelerated. As the largest supplier of acrylonitrile, Shenghong has guaranteed the supply of raw materials to more than half of China's carbon fiber production enterprises, including Zhongfu Shenying, a leading domestic carbon fiber enterprise.
In Lianyungang Banqiao Industrial Park, the construction of Zhongfu Shenying's project with an annual output of 30,000 tonnes began in April 2023. After being put into production, it will become the world's largest high-performance carbon fiber production base. This base is just a little more than 20 kilometers away from Shenghong Petrochemical Industrial Park.
Same area, same frequency. In May 2023, Zhongfu Shenying and Shenghong Petrochemical signed a strategic agreement on raw material cooperation, and the two sides will cooperate in all aspects of acrylonitrile supply. The cooperation with Shenghong helps obtain a stable supply of raw materials, thus improving the resilience of the entire industrial chain. The relevant person in charge of Zhongfu Shenying said.
In fact, Zhongfu Shenying is also among the first batch of users of Shenghong acrylonitrile products. With Shenghong's first 260,000 tonnes/year acrylonitrile unit put into production, Zhongfu Shenying began to try Shenghong products. Shenghong's acrylonitrile product quality has been stable, with all goods arriving on time. The relevant person in charge of the Zhongfu Eagle Business Department said that he expected the two sides to strengthen innovation and coordination, such as creating customized raw materials for the carbon fiber industry, and working together to protect the important strategic material of the country.
Today, in Lianyungang, with Shenghong Petrochemical and Zhongfu Shenying as the axis, including many downstream application enterprises, a whole industrial chain of carbon fiber from raw materials; raw wire, carbon wire, composites to final products has been formed. The meaning of "materials first" to "manufacturing a powerful country" can be seen from this.
In addition to carbon fiber, China's ABS resin, acrylamide and other industries have also maintained a steady growth trend in recent years. For example, with ABS resin; widely used in household appliances such as automobiles, building materials and other fields; the demand in China in 2022 was 5,758,700 tonnes, while the domestic output was about 4.466 million tonnes, an increase of 8.37% year-on-year, whereby demand for acrylonitrile raw materials remained high.
"With supply and demand matching and flexible development, we have maintained good cooperation with leading enterprises in various application fields of acrylonitrile”, said Yang Jun, general manager of Sierbang Petrochemical, adding that Shenghong had achieved “1 million tonnes" of acrylonitrile, strongly ensuring the supply of raw materials for national strategic industries and becoming an important stabilizer for a solid chain, fusion chain and strong chain in the carbon fiber and other industries.
Industry benchmark: "three heads as one" core raw material platform
For acrylonitrile enterprises in the midstream, the ability to grasp the extent of acrylic raw materials and balance the price fluctuations of commodities such as oil has become a decisive factor in high-quality development.
Where does acrylic come from?
1. Petroleum, the production mode is stream cracking and catalytic cracking in oil refinery;
2. Coal, from coal processing to produce synthetic gas to re-produce methanol, and finally produce propylene;
3. Natural gas, produced by using natural gas to produce propane by the dehydrogenation of propane.
How to optimize the raw material supply structure and achieve diversified resource security? Bai Wei, president of Shenghong Petrochemical Industrial Group, pointed out that Shenghong Petrochemical has built a "1+N" innovative development model comprising a core raw material platform + diversified industrial chains such as new energy and new materials, building a core raw material platform that is "oil, coal and gas", which can provide the best combination of raw material sources for the production of acrylonitrile, MMA (methyl methacrylate), photovoltaic-grade EVA (ethylene-vinyl acetate copolymer), UHMWP, et
Specifically regarding acrylonitrile, Bai Wei stated that the simultaneous development of three propylene feedstocks allows, "us to flexibly adjust equipment capacity according to market conditions, achieving complementary advantages and reducing costs while increasing efficiency”.
For oil: In December 2022, Shenghong Petrochemical's 16 million tonnes/year refining and chemical integration project was fully put into production. After nearly a year of operation, the ethylene, propylene, propane, vinyl acetate, etc. produced by this single-process refining project in the country has strongly met the raw material needs for Shenghong acrylonitrile and other products.
For coal: Shenghong Sierbang Petrochemical has the world's largest monomer scale of 2.4 million tonnes/year of alcohol-based multi-co-production units, which use methanol as the raw material to produce ethylene and propylene through the MTO (methanol olefin) process.
For gas: In April 2022, Shenghong Sierbang Petrochemical's 700,000 tonnes/year PDH (propane dehydrogenation) unit was successfully driven to then produce excellent propylene products. Combined with the MTO unit, the overall production capacity of Sierbang's own acrylic amounts to 1.2 million tonnes/year, which can fully meet the raw material needs for four 260,000 tonnes/year acrylonitrile units.
In the Lianyungang Shenghong Petrochemical Industrial Park, raw materials and processes are efficiently coordinated and supported, so that Shenghong has formed a significant scale advantage and cost advantage in the field of acrylonitrile.
