Minimum operating rate of methanol-to-olefins plants
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I seem to have heard before that in the MTO process, in order to ensure the quality of the olefin products, the operation rate must be at least 60%; I wonder if such a restriction actually exists in practice With oil prices currently so low, it seems that several coastal MTO plants are either under maintenance or have reduced their operating capacity to 50%.
At the current stage, overall in terms of costs, methanol-to-olefins plants incur losses when producing propylene, but they make a profit from producing ethylene. Therefore, within the range of what can be adjusted, manufacturers try to produce as much ethylene as possible. Meanwhile, the MTO plants that are being planned and constructed also have new design requirements regarding the ratio of propylene to ethylene, aiming to produce more ethylene and less propylene. Since the cost of producing propylene using the PDH process is low at present, MTO-propylene is not competitive. At the same time, the product quality and PDH levels are also much lower; for some high-end end-users, the propylene produced by MTO cannot be used in a stable and continuous manner, which is another issue that must be taken into consideration. For a general comparison, the cost of propylene in the PDH process = propane * 1.16 + 2000, while the cost of propylene in the MTO process = methanol * 2.8 + 2200 ； Therefore, at the current stage, MTO does not possess competitiveness, especially MTP units ； Here, accounting is done separately; if it’s necessary to use the profits from ethylene as a subsidy for propylene, then that’s another matter ；