United States installed capacity

Gut Rubber and Extruded Latex. The manufacturing technology for cut and extmded mbber thread is much older and more widely known than that for spandex fibers. Because production faciUties can be installed with relatively modest capital investment, manufacture of mbber thread is fragmented and more widely distributed with a few major and many minor producers. On a worldwide basis, Fikattice of Italy is the largest mbber thread producer with modem extmded latex plants in Italy, Spain, Malaysia, and the United States. Second in production capacity is the Globe Manufacturing Co., Fall River, Massachusettes with production operations in the United States and the UK. These firms also produce spandex fibers. 

Butane. Butane LPO has been a significant source for the commercial production of acetic acid and acetic anhydride for many years. At various times, plants have operated in the former USSR, Germany, Holland, the United States, and Canada. Only the Hoechst-Celanese Chemical Group, Inc. plants in Pampa, Texas, and Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, continue to operate. The Pampa plant, with a reported aimual production of 250,000 t/yr, represents about 15% of the 1994 installed U.S. capacity (212). Methanol carbonylation is now the dominant process for acetic acid production, but butane LPO in estabhshed plants remains competitive. 

Tide 1 of the CAAA of 1990 focuses on utiHty units located in ozone nonattainment regions of the United States, which include approximately 100 different areas where national standards for ground-level ozone (O ) are exceeded. More than 900 utiHty boilers are located within the nonattainment zones, including 90 units impacted by Phase I of Tide 4. These boilers represent approximately 400,000 MW of installed capacity and 60% of the country s UtiHty boilers. 

The first direct-arc furnace in the United States was a single-phase two-electrode rectangular furnace of 4-t capacity at the Halcomb Steel Company (Syracuse, New York), which made its first heat in 1906. A similar but smaller furnace was installed two years later at the Firth-Sterling Steel Company in McKeesport, Pennsylvania. In 1909, a 15-t three-phase furnace was installed in the South Works of the Illinois Steel Company, in Chicago, Illinois, which was, at that time, the largest electric steelmaking furnace in the world. It was the first round instead of rectangular furnace and operated on 25-cycle power at 2200 V. 

The total consumption of succinic acid and succinic anhydride in 1990 was 1,500 t in the United States, 2,500 t in Europe, 7,500 t in Japan, and 1,500 t in other countries. Production was 500 t in the United States, 2,500 t in Europe, and 11,000 t in Japan. The total installed capacity is in the 18,000—20,000-t/yr range. The total consumption decreased slightly between 1990 and 1994 mainly because of the replacement of succinic acid by fumaric acid in bath preparations, which is one of the main uses of succinic acid in Japan. The principal producers are Buffalo Color in the United States, Lon2a SpA and Chemie Tin 2 in Europe, Kawasaki Kasei, Nippon Shokubai, Takeda Chemical, Kyowa Hakko, and New Japan Chemical in Japan. 

The process of fluid catalytic cracking (FCC) is the central process in a modem, gasoline-oriented refinery. In U.S. refineries, the amount of feed processed by fluid catalytic cracking units (FCCU) is equivalent to 35% of the total cmde oil processed in the United States (1). As of January 1991, installed FCCU capacity in the United States was 8.6 x ICf m /d (5.4 x 10 barrels/d). 

Many dozens of industrialized countries now employ nuclear reactors for power generation, and some countries produce more electrical power by nuclear reaction than by fossil fuel combustion (France is an example). The United States, however, has the largest installed capacity of nuclear-powered boiler plants (in the year 2000 there are more than 120 nuclear reactor power plants in the United States). Nuclear power is also widely used for marine duty in both commercial and naval vessels. 

Upgrading and refinery capacity While essentially all of the mined bitumen is upgraded in Alberta, the majority of in-situ production is shipped as bitumen blend with a light diluent to refineries in the United States that are suitably equipped to handle such feedstock. This historical split needs to be overcome in the future and further upgrading capacities will have to be installed in Canada, especially to reduce the need for diluents. In addition, the proposed extension of synthetic-crude-oil supply will require new refinery capacities, either in Canada or the United States. 

In Western Europe it is expected that new isomerization capacity may exceed alkylation installations since naphtha availability generally exceeds demand. By selecting isomerization over alkylation the octane number of the gasoline pool may be increased without increasing the volume. Moreover, olefinic charge stock avails for alkylation are considerably smaller in Europe since there are fewer catalytic cracking units per refinery than in the United States and Canada. It is predicted that C5, and to a lesser extent C5/C6 isomerization, will prevail over alkylation in Western Europe until more catalytic cracking units are installed and/or a shift in the demand for naphtha over fuel oil is experienced. 

---