Japanese Carbon Company plant

Indemitsu Kosan Co., Ltd., Tokyo, Japan— Japanese State oil company, operates a petroleum pitch based carbon fibers plant. 

The other major advantage was that the United States was not to be its only customer. In fact, before the plant was built Japan Gas Chemical contracted to buy half the urea output. Here the advantage of Alaska over any other United States location except Hawaii is a reduction in shipping costs. Kenai is 1,400 miles (2,250 km) closer to Japan than is any California location. This, coupled with the low raw material costs, would make its delivered cost less than most other Japanese fertilizer sources. When all these factors were considered, the Collier Carbon and Chemical Company reasoned it was cheaper to process the natural gas into ammonia at its source even with those difficult climatic and economic conditions than to ship the gas to a more advantageous location and then make ammonia. 

Different variations of the Enichem process have been described that may show some improvements in selectivity and efficiency of the catalyst system, but they generally seem to be less attractive from the economic point of view and none of them has been realized until now. For example, since 1986 the Japanese company Daicel especially has applied for numerous patents on modifications of the Enichem process, in which dimethyl carbonate is prepared in the presence of catalyst systems that contain copper and palladium salts and additional modifiers, e. g., quinoid compounds and quatemery phosphonium halides [40-48]. Although Daicel has announced several times the constmction of an industrial plant for the production of dimethyl carbonate, all investment plans now seem to be put aside. The separation of the reaction product from the complicated catalyst system as well as the complete recycling of the palladium compounds, which is a necessary requirement for any economic process design, seem not to be solved sufficiently. 

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