Issue 11/2015 - China's CHDM achieves industrial production

Dalian Institute of Chemicals of the Chinese Academy of Sciences recently released news that the institute's one-carbon chemistry and fine chemical catalysis research group broke the international monopoly in the production technology of 1,4-cyclohexanedimethanol (CHDM), and China's first 10,000-ton CHDM plant built with this technology has been put into production, and the products have reached the international advanced level, which is expected to change the long-term
shortage of CHDM in China.

CHDM is an important monomer used to synthesize a variety of high-performance polyester materials, and in recent years, with the rapid development of the global polyester industry, the market demand for CHDM has been increasing
.
Industry insiders predict that the average annual growth rate of world CHDM consumption in the future will be about 12%, and by 2015, China's CHDM market demand can reach 50,000 tons
.
However, due to the difficulty of CHDM synthesis, there has been no industrial production in China, and only a few companies in the United States and South Korea can produce abroad, resulting in high market prices
.
Domestic polyester production enterprises rely on imports of CHDM raw materials, high product costs, weak competitiveness, which seriously restricts the industrialization process
of new polyester materials in China.

In 1999, the one-carbon chemistry and fine chemical catalysis research group of Dalian Institute of Chemicals of the Chinese Academy of Sciences began the laboratory test research on the production of CHDM by high-pressure hydrogenation using dimethyl terephthalate (DMT) as raw material, and successively completed the laboratory test and the single-tube mold test amplification study
of vertical upgrade catalyst loading.
In 2011, it began to cooperate with the new chemical process engineering research group of the institute, and after 3 years of industrialization research, developed a patented proprietary technology for 10,000-ton industrialization and a catalyst
for the two-stage hydrogenation of DMT with independent intellectual property rights in China.
In 2012, Dalian Institute of Physics and Chemistry cooperated with Kailing (Zhangjiagang) Chemical Co.
, Ltd.
to start the construction of an annual output of 20,000 tons of CHDM industrial plant, in April 2014 the plant successfully opened up the whole process, and trial production of nearly 1000 tons of products, the products have been tried by more than 20 foreign manufacturers, can meet their requirements
for raw materials.

Subsequently, Dalian Chemical Institute continued to optimize and upgrade the distillation system of its industrial plant, and overcame the application difficulties of CHDM products in Japan's high-end automotive engineering plastics and other products, and by March 2015, the product quality produced by this equipment technology fully met the special quality requirements of
Japanese customers.
The results of product performance test show that China's first 10,000-ton CHDM industrial production technology has reached the international advanced level, and the product can replace imports, which will effectively promote the development of
domestic polyester new material industry.
(New)