Japan's Mitsubishi Rayon plans to almost double the capacity of its methyl methacrylate plant in South Korea to 188,000 mt/year by January 2013, the company said Thursday.
The plant in Daesan, operated by the company's South Korean subsidiary, Daesan MMA, currently has a capacity of 98,000 mt/year.
The company also plans to expand its acrylic acid capacity in Daesan to 110,000 mt/year by January 2013, from 60,000 mt/year currently. Acrylic acid is downstream from MMA, and is widely used in the production of LCD LED screens. Daesan MMA is equally owned by Mitsubishi Rayon and South Korea's Honam Petrochemical. Mitsubishi Rayon on October 1, 2010 became a wholly owned subsidiary of Mitsubishi Chemical. Mitsubishi Rayon has a total global MMA production capacity of around 1.3 million mt/year with plants in the US, UK, Japan, South Korea, Thailand, Taiwan and China. Daesan MMA uses isobutylene and methanol as feedstock for the plant in South Korea, with the isobutylene bought from Honam. Some MMA plants that use isobutylene feedstock, require MTBE feedstock to produce the isobutylene, but this Daesan plant does not as it gets its feed from Honam.
MMA is most widely produced using acetone, methanol, hydrogen cyanide and sulfuric acid.
