Lyondell Starts Large-Scale TBAc for Industrial Markets

04 October 1999 00:00  [Source: ICB Americas]

By Feliza Mirasol

Lyondell Chemical has launched its tertiary-butyl acetate (TBAc), which the company can now produce on a commercial basis at a significantly cost-effective rate. The first US company to manufacture and market TBAc on a large-volume scale, Lyondell is selling the product for less than $1 per pound.

Thanks to a new proprietary production process, Lyondell can manufacture larger quantities of TBAc at a much lower cost than traditional methods yield. The company uses cheap petrochemical compounds--acetic acid with either tertiary butyl alcohol or isobutylene--for raw materials.

"Our manufacturing process is significantly easier than the previous route using ketene technology," says Gail Kelly, project manager for TBAc at Lyondell. "[The company] is basic in TBA/isobutylene, which provides for favorable product economics. In addition, our material is purer than the previously available commercial material."

Lyondell manufactures TBAc in Houston, Tex., through an agreement with a toll partner. The company can produce more than 50 million pounds (over 22,000 metric tons) per year and can quickly and easily expand production as the market increases, according to Ms. Kelly.

Until now, the availability of TBAc was limited, and it was primarily supplied by Germany-based Wacker Chemie GmbH. Wacker supplied more than half of the global market, estimates Hans Pommerening, business manager for organics at Wacker.

A major factor limiting the commercial production of TBAc was its cost. The different methods of synthesis "deviate significantly by the chemical route and the costs," Mr. Pommerening says.

The most standard method entails reacting tertiary butanol with acetic acid anhydride, yielding TBAc as well as acetic acid as a byproduct. With this process, further purification is needed because of the presence of the byproduct.

The second method, which Wacker uses, involves tertiary butanol and its direct reaction with ketene. "This is a straightforward route with no direct byproducts," Mr. Pommerening says. "You do not lose any material and it is a cheaper process than the first method."

Wacker annually produces several tens of tons of TBAc at a ketene plant in Burghausen, Germany. The company's ketene technology and its multipurpose facility allow it to manufacture several compounds in addition to TBAc.

At present, TBAc is used in relatively small volumes as a synthetic building block for active pharmaceutical ingredients, according to Mr. Pommerening. TBAc is also an organic synthesis reagent for agricultural chemicals, fine chemicals and pharmaceuticals.

Those industries can also use the product as a process solvent, a large-volume application that Lyondell is targeting. In commercial quantities, Lyondell's TBAc offers chemists a versatile alternative for the synthesis of active pharmaceutical ingredients, pesticides and other fine chemicals (CMR, 9/27/99, pg. 7).

Because prices have been driven down dramatically by Lyondell's entrance, Wacker's manufacturing process is no longer cost-competitive. The company will not comment on whether it will eventually withdraw from the market, but Wacker will continue to make TBAc for its customers.

Total consumption of TBAc is estimated at 1 million pounds per year. "Part of the drive for this chemical is an environmental push," explains Ms. Kelly. Although environmental issues are not pertinent to the organic reagent or process solvent areas, they are the main reason why Lyondell is commercializing the product. "This push is in other areas such as coatings, cleaners and adhesives," she says.

"We're hoping to use about 1 million pounds or so per year, first off," adds Mike Szady, market development specialist at Lyondell. "Secondly, we're going to continue to promote this product [for use in the process solvent area] because it is now at a significantly lower cost for the manufacturers. If you were to use something like a process solvent [that costs] multiple dollars per pound, that's not very feasible. But once you get below $1 dollar per pound, then use as a solvent picks up."

"Our TBAc was, up until now, only sold as a synthetic building block for pharmaceutical ingredients and therefore had a very limited market," says Wacker's Mr. Pommerening. Wacker's TBAc was priced above $5 per pound because of its higher raw material and process costs and the low quantities required.

Lyondell's introduction of the molecule as a standard solvent extends the range of solvents available on the market. "This is, of course, an application which goes into thousands of tons per year," Mr. Pommerening notes. "Whereas, previously, this was not the market for us due to the different [synthesis] process in which we have significantly higher costs than Lyondell. We wouldn't have had the capacity for the solvent application either."

He adds that Wacker's process is not competitive with Lyondell's, and he expects prices to fall by a factor of four to five times. "This is a new process which Lyondell is exercising, and with a larger scale, about 10 times more. They have a significant price advantage. There is basically no competition here."

Wacker will have the ability to produce TBAc at its multipurpose production unit, but it will not be able to match Lyondell's prices because of the cost differences of the different routes.

A third company that manufactures TBAc on a commercial scale is Brno, Czech Republic-based Lachema AS. That company has capacity of up to 40 metric tons per year and exports most of its product to the US.

Other companies that make the product do so in laboratory-scale quantities. Two years ago, Wilrijk, Belgium-based Chemo-syntha BVBA stopped producing TBAc because of high costs.

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