Commodity products producing large-volumes

Biocatalysts Ltd. is an independent company that since 1980 has been devoted to the manufacture and sales enzymes. Since it is not part of a larger chemical, food ingredients or pharmaceutical company, instead of producing large volumes of commodity enzymes, it produces enzymes tailored to customer needs. Their services include working together with customers to industrialize their processes or to produce specific required enzymes. Usually, these customer sectors do not require single enzyme entities, but enzyme complexes where the ratios of each of the components are crucial to the efficacy of the whole enzyme-biocatalyst product and to the customer s process. Fermentation requirements for the manufacture of enzyme products are sub-contracted out. 

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. 

A useful way of classifying chemicals is shown in Fig. 2.1. Chemicals are divided on the basis of volume and character. Bulk chemicals, or commodities, are produced in large quantities and sold on the basis of an industry specification. There is essentially no difference in the product from different suppliers. Typical examples would be acetone, ethylene oxide, and phenol. Pseudo commodities are also made in large quantities but are sold on the basis of their performance. In many cases the product is formulated and properties can differ from one supplier to another. Examples include large volume polymers, surfactants, paints, etc. 

The different classes of chemical products will have very different added value (the difference between the selling price of the product and the purchase cost of raw materials). Commodity chemicals tend to have low added value, whereas fine and specialty chemicals tend to have high added value. Commodity chemicals tend to be produced in large volumes with low added value, while fine and specialty chemicals tend to be produced in small volumes with high added value. 

Commodities are mass products produced and sold in high volumes with standardized quality and few variants. Primary commodities such as natural resources can be defined as materials in their natural state (Baker 1992) produced in large volumes and available from many sources (Champion/Feame 2000). 

The manufacturing processes for textile filament, staple and industrial filament yams have become so specialized that it is not possible to make one such class of fibers on the others equipment. Within these classes, there are production machines specialized for certain types of fibers for specific types of consumer products. Large machines designed to produce high volumes of commodity products (e.g. staple for cotton blending) at high efficiency and low cost are not well suited to the efficient production of specialty staple variants (e.g. fibers with special dyeing properties) and vice-versa. 

Blending of the lowest price commodity polymers from synthetic and carbohydrate polymer families [e.g., poly(ethylene) and starch] would appear to follow these laws. Although each polymer class is produced in large volume (first law), the production rate for com starch/synthetic polymer blends is much lower than that for the synthetic polymer this slower extrusion rate directly affects the final cost. Ignoring this limitation, the film properties of the blend are significantly poorer than those of the synthetic polymer film. Both deficiencies are related to the poor thermoplastic properties of water-soluble polymers such as cora-starch. 

Commodities are large-volume, low-price, homogeneous, and standardized chemicals produced in dedicated plants and used for a large variety of applications. Prices are cyclic and fully transparent. Petrochemicals, basic chemicals, heavy organic and inorganic chemicals (large-volume) monomers, commodity fibers, and plastics are all part of commodities. Typical examples of single products are ethylene, propylene, caprolactame, methanol, BTX (benzene, toluene, xylenes), phthalic anhydride, poly (vinyl chloride) soda, and sulfuric acid. 

In most cases standard products are commodities, as they are produced in large volumes in dedicated plants and cost less than 5- 10/kg. 

Other compounds that can be produced directly from biomass in good yields, but which do not retain the basic structural characteristics of biomass, are also classified as commodity chemicals. Examples are acetic acid, methane, and synthesis gas. They are not manufactured in large volumes from biomass because fossil fuels are the preferred feedstocks in commercial production systems. Technically, biomass can serve as a feedstock for production of the entire range of commodity organic chemicals presently manufactured from fossil fuels. The various routes to large-volume chemicals from biomass will be examined later. Consider first some of the existing biomass-based chemicals, most of which are specialty chemicals that are manufactured for commercial markets. 

For the reasons mentioned, lactic acid has the potential to become a very large-volume, commodity-chemical green product that can be produced biologically from carbohydrates to serve as the feedstock for polylactate. This potential demand is estimated at 5.5 to 5.7 billion Ib/year (or 2.5 to 3.4 million tons). Due to this potential, many large corporations have been involved in product and process development of lactic acid and polylactate production Chemical Market Reporter, October 28 1996). 

Traditionally, sulfur is a low cost commodity chemical used mostly in the production of sulfuric acid and other fundamental building blocks of the chemical industry. Since these uses are typified by large volume, low cost considerations, many chemists think of sulfur and sulfur compounds only in these terms. However, with ingenuity and inventiveness, high quality products which will command a much higher price and are of extreme value in the marketplace can be produced from sulfur or some of its most common compounds. 

Manufacture and Use. Many of these chemicals, such as chlorine, ammonia, and ammonia-derived fertilizers, are produced and purchased in large volumes as commodity chemicals and may rely on natural gas or crude oil as a feedstock. They are used both as building blocks for other manufactured goods and as end products in themselves (e.g., chlorine, ammonia-derived fertilizers). The chemicals in this category can be substitutable, although not always readily for example, substances other than chlorine gas can be used to purify drinking water, but at a cost of time and money to effect the substitution that may not be acceptable to all communities. 

Most high-tonnage commodity polymers are produced in continuous processes. The feed is metered continuously into the reactor and the effluent is removed continuously from the reactor. When polymerization reaches a steady state in operation, the rate of heat generated at any point in the system is usually constant. Continuous processes have advantages of easy operation and low costs, particularly suitable for large-volume production. The mass balances of reactants and products are in a general form of accumulation = flow in - flow out + production - consumption. For example, in the continuous free-radical polymerization, the mass balances for initiator, monomer and polymer, are... 

Succinic acid is one of the high-volume specialty chemicals. It is produced by the catalytic hydrogenation of petrochemical maleic acid or anhydride. However, due to cost reductions delivered via the production of succinic acid from the bacterial fermentation of carbohydrates, a large-volume commodity market could be realized. Presently, the bacterial strain used for succinic acid manufacturing is Escherichia coli. However, the requirement for lower costs is moving companies toward other microorganisms, such as Coryne-type bacteria and yeast. Succinic acid can be converted to 1,4-butanediol (EDO) and other products. It also serves as a raw material for diverse important chemicals, including polymers, polybutylene terephthalate, and polybutylene succinate. 

Countries produciug commodity LLDPE and their capacities, as well as production volumes of some U.S. companies, are Hsted iu Table 5. Iu most cases, an accurate estimate of the total LLDPE production capacity is compHcated by the fact that a large number of plants are used, iu turn, for the manufacture of either HDPE or LLDPE iu the same reactors. VLDPE and LLDPE resius with a uniform branching distribution were initially produced in the United States by Exxon Chemical Company and Dow Chemical Company. However, since several other companies around the world have also aimounced their entry into this market, the worldwide capacity of uniformly branched LLDPE resins in 1995 is expected to reach a million tons. Special grades of LLDPE resins with broad MWD are produced by Phillips Petroleum Co. under the trade name Low Density Linear Polyethylenes or LDLPE. 

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