Celanese Corp. (Dallas, Tex.; www.celanese.com) announced acetic acid and vinyl acetate monomer (VAM) capacity expansions and debottlenecking projects at the company’s global manufacturing facilities.
At the company’s Clear Lake, Texas acetyls manufacturing facility, Celanese is on schedule to start up additional 150,000 metric tons per year (m.t./yr) of VAM capacity by the fourth quarter of 2018. Once this additional production capacity is added, the total capacity for VAM at the Clear Lake facility will be 450,000 m.t./yr, making it the largest VAM plant in the world.
Additionally, across its global network of acetyls manufacturing plants, Celanese will implement and translate a series of capital efficient technology-oriented process improvement projects that will add 140,000 m.t./yr of acetic acid and 150,000 m.t./yr of VAM, when required by demand growth, through the year 2020. These proprietary debottlenecking projects will leverage a new generation of Celanese’s AOPlus acetic acid and VAntagePlus VAM manufacturing technologies.
“Today’s announcement exhibits Celanese’s leading acetyl technology and our continued commitment to innovation and productivity within the acetyl chain. To have the ability to add incremental capacity or production volumes as industry growth requires, and do it with an efficient capital outlay, is a hallmark of our industry leadership position,” stated Todd Elliott, senior vice president, Acetyls.