Commodity Production

When polymers or commodity production in the chemical industry is considered, a tacit consensus is that plants cannot compete with petrochemically derived 

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Insulation Boa.rd. The panel products known as insulation board were the earliest commodity products made from fibers or particles in the composite panel area. These are fiber-base products with a density less than 500 kg/m. Early U.S. patents were obtained in 1915 and production began soon thereafter. The initial production used wood fiber as a raw material, but later products were made of recycled paper, bagasse (sugar cane residue), and straw. Schematics of the two major processes still ia use are shown ia Figure 4. 

Commercial production of PE resias with densities of 0.925 and 0.935 g/cm was started ia 1968 ia the United States by Phillips Petroleum Co. Over time, these resias, particularly LLDPE, became large volume commodity products. Their combiaed worldwide productioa ia 1994 reached 13 X 10 metric t/yr, accouatiag for some 30% market share of all PE resias ia the year 2000, LLDPE productioa is expected to iacrease by 50%. A aew type of LLDPE, compositioaaHy uniform ethylene—a-olefin copolymers produced with metallocene catalysts, was first introduced by Exxon Chemical Company in 1990. The initial production volume was 13,500 t/yr but its growth has been rapid indeed, in 1995 its combiaed production by several companies exceeded 800,000 tons. 

Department of International Economic and Social Affairs, Industrial Statistics Yearbook 1986, Vol. 2, Commodity Production Statistics 1978—1987, United... 

Fuels. Two-thirds of the fuel used by the United States chemical industry in 1988 was natural gas [8006-14-2] which is clean and easy to combust (see Gas, natural). Although relatively inexpensive at the wellhead, natural gas is cosdy to transport. Hence the chemical industry is concentrated in regions where natural gas is produced, keeping the average price paid by the U.S. chemical industry for natural gas in 1988 to only 80% of the average U.S. industrial price (1). Similarly the movement of chemical commodity production to the Middle East is driven by the desire to obtain low cost natural gas. 

Potential advantages of both thermoplastics and cellu-losic materials combined with the economic and environmental viewpoint have lead to a promising utilization of both these materials in various forms of composites. Although various branches of cellulosic-thermoplastic composites industries are booming in recent years, their growth rate is very slow. In order to achieve the full potential of such valuable materials as various engineering materials and commodity products more incentives from academic, industrial, and governmental authorities are needed. 

Commodity products tend to be supplied in either powdered or crystalline form, whereas specialty products and blends were originally supplied pulverized, or as balls, but now are available as easier-to-han-dle liquids. 

Dicyclohexylamine (DCHA), C6HuNHC6Hn, MW = 181.3. Sp. gr = 0.914. Flash point = 219 °F (ASTM D56/closed cup). Available as strongly basic, secondary amine, 99+% commodity product, from manufacturers such as Monsanto Chemical Company and Abbott Laboratories, Inc. 

Diethanolamine (DEA), 2,2 -iminodiethanol di( -ethyloxy)aniline. HN-(CH2CH2OH)2, MW = 105.1. Sp. gr. = 1.097. Flash point = 280 °F. Also used as an absorbent for acidic gases in petrochemical operations. Hygroscopic. Available as a 98.5+% alkyl amine commodity product from various international manufacturers, including Texaco Corporation. Commonly available through chemical distributors. 

Dimethylaminoethanol (DMAE), also known as N,N-dimethylethanolamine (DMEA) HOCH2CH2N(CH3)2 MW = 89.1. Sp.gr. = 0.887. Flash point = 105 °F/40 °C. Available as a 98.5+% amine commodity product from various international manufacturers and commonly available through chemical distributors. 

M. Moo-Young, H.W Blanch, S. Drew, D.I.C. Wang (eds.). Comprehensive Biotechnology, vol.3. The practice of biotechnology current commodity products, Pergamon Press, Oxford (1985). 

With the renaissance in alkene chemistry engendered by the rising versatility of olefin metathesis in both fine chemical and commodity production, new methods for alkene isomerization are of increasing interest and importance. Alkene isomerization can be performed using Bronsted-Lowry acid or base catalysis (1). However, these reactions are limited to substrates which tolerate carbanionic or carbocation intermediates, and are susceptible to undesired side reactions. 

Vitamin E, being first reported barely a century ago, is the biologically most important fat-soluble antioxidant and has become a commodity product and bulk chemical in the meantime. Besides its antioxidant function, several nonantioxidant actions of the compound have been recently identified and new ones are still being discovered.1... 

Sciubba (2003) proposed an approach called the extended exergy accounting (EEA), which calculates the real, resource-based value of a commodity product. The time span of EEA is the whole life of a plant. The EEA includes the exergetics flow sheets for non-energetic costs of labor and environmental remediation expenditures, and hence uses extended exergetic content. It also defines the criterion for an optimum process or operation (Sciubba, 2003). 

Nelson E, Mendoza G, Regetz J, Polasky S, Tallis H, Cameron D, Chan KM, et al. Modeling multiple ecosystem services, biodiversity conservation, commodity production and tradeoffs at landscape scales. Frontiers in Ecology and Environment, 2009. 7 pp. 4-11. doi 10.1890/080023... 

The main question is whether synthesis of PHA in plants can succeed in bringing the cost of the polymer down to the range of 0.5 -1 US /kg. Bacterial production of PHA typically relies on a carbon source, such as sucrose or glucose, which is produced from photosynthesis and extracted from plants. Synthesis of PHA directly in plants would, therefore, represent a saving in terms of the number of intermediary steps linking C02 fixation to PHA production. Furthermore, starch is one of the cheapest plant commodity product on the market, at about 0.25 US /kg [86]. It is, thus, likely that the production cost of PHA in plants will be substantially cheaper than bacterial fermentation. The final cost of producing PHA in plants will depend on a number of factors. 

Scale up need, however, as pointed out by Samdani and Gilges [48], not be an issue, as commodity products such as adiponitrile (200000 t/year), chlor-alkali, or chlorate are already produced on a very large scale electrochemically. 

This relatively stable system now faces increasing volatility and complexity due to volatile demand and raw material prices as well as globalization in markets and company networks. Specifically, price-volatile commodity products within the chemical industry require planning volumes together with values across sales to procurement. In this context, the work of Matthias Kannegiesser focuses on two research questions ... 

A key product classification scheme in the chemical industry is the differentiation of specialty and commodity products. Kline (1976) provides a segmentation of the chemical industry into commodities, specialties and fine chemicals shown in fig. 28. 

Batch production is also related to multi-purpose resources. The integration of batch schedules across resources for related products is one of the most challenging production scheduling tasks. Commodity products are rather produced in continuous and campaign production mode with high... 

Production processes for chemical commodities exist often already for decades and are continuously enhanced as shown in the following example from the 1970s. Commodity production processes this time already have been rather complex composed by multiple reactions and interim steps as shown in the following example of Caprolactam production, an intermediate product for Polyamide (Sittig 1972, p. 139) in fig. 35. 

Commodity production planning requires to aggregate the process-internal units such as reactors, dryers or tanks into a an aggregate asset planned as a whole with dedicated interfaces of raw material input and production output as shown in the left and right part of the process example. 

The defined scope determines the applicability of developed planning requirements and the planning model limited to the selected attributes. For example, the value chain for commodity production is focused on campaign and continuous production modes batch production is out of the scope that planning requirements and consequently, planning model are not developed for batch production problems. 

The product type can be commodity or specialty. Commodity products are considered with a defined standard quality, where price is the key buying criterion. The product life cycle for chemical commodities can be relatively long meaning that the products are in the market partly for decades. Examples for short life cycle commodities on the other hand are semiconductors that are also mainly sold over price, but are shortly out-dated due to technology advances. The number of products is medium and does not reach the complexity of specialty product portfolios, where often more than 1,000 products need to be handled by a company. The product customization is standardized with some variants with respect to product properties but not related to a specific customer. Product perishability is... 

Production Planning detailing the planning requirements for a chemical commodity production with continuous and multi-purpose resources... 

Production planning is a key part in planning since it impacts utilization of capital-intensive assets and the overall offered supply. Production planning requirements are comprehensive addressing two key tasks for planning commodity production... 

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