Petrochemicals target analysis

Because the majority of petrochemical analyses involve a group-type separation rather than a target analysis, a number of examples of this type of separation will be discussed. 

As shown in Table III, the BDSA process offers significant advantages in two primary areas. First, the process has a significantly lower estimated production cost for BDO, succinic acid, and several other commodity chemicals, as well as lower energy consumption during production. Current com production could easily supply the 100 to 200 hundred million pounds of com sugar required for each major chemical plant, and use of this feedstock would decrease petroleum consumption and imports. Further analysis by ACC and New Horizon of the production cost for succinic acid in our fermentation process has included several process modifications to further decrease costs. The estimated costs in 1998 were 0.20/lb sodium succinate. However, the petrochemical routes to BDO have also had further improvements, increased capacity and presumably lowered the target price. 

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