Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Acetic acid production in Venezuela



Image source

The first elemnent that caught my attention from the list of all projects that are being built in Venezuela, is the acetic acid production.

It caught my attention simply because I have never worked with it. It is a simple carboxilic acid (COOH), and their main uses are the production of vinyl acetate monomer, and the production of purified terephthalate acid (PTA), to produce Polyethylene terephthalate.

Its production is bound to the synthesis gas, and follows the following scheme:


In most of the world its production follows the GDP numbers, and in Europe there no more plants being planned. The new developments are planned mainly in China.

In latinamerica, Acetic acid is still growing at a rate of 6% to 7%, and is bounded to the capacity addition of the region, that is exactly where Pequiven is looking for, there is a growing demand in all the areas of consumption and derivatives of acetic acid, and therefore its market is assured.

The profits of acetic acid production are maybe not staggering. But that is not the idea of a petrochemical business in Venezuela, in my opinion, the main goal is to add more value through the chain of derivatives.

The sources for this post are this and this one.