Technology
Butene is a by-product of the process to produce butadiene and raw materials of acrylic resins in the petrochemical industrial complex, and it is used mainly for fuel. Asahi Kasei, one of Japan�s leading chemical companies, developed a technology to react butene with oxygen to extract butadiene at a low cost. Butadiene is used for high-performance synthetic rubber (S-SBR: Solution Styrene-Butadiene Rubber) for low rolling resistance tires and acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene (ABS) resins for the body of LCD TVs. Demand for butadiene will supposedly grow rapidly, but it can be produced only from naphtha at present. Japan�s domestic butadiene production was about 935,000 tons in 2011. It has been hard to extract butadiene from butene and other chemical products because of cost problem.
The company will build a mass production plant with an investment of 5-10 billion yen in 2014. Supply of butadiene is growing tight, and butadiene was a little below 4,000 dollars per ton in Asia at the end of February this year that is very close to the highest price recorded last summer. It has become a critical issue for synthetic rubber makers and synthetic resin makers alike to secure butadiene. Asahi Kasei will build its first plant in a foreign country in Singapore in 2013. It is the world�s second largest producer of high-performance synthetic rubber following JSR.
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