With start up of new Methanol-to-Olefins unit in China the demand for Methanol is likely to gain a significant boost in next few weeks. The MTO unit – with designed capacities of 240,000 tonnes/ year for ethylene and 360,000 tonnes/ year for propylene - started trial runs on last week. Further Luxi Chemical and Zhong’an Lianhe Chemical were also expected to start conducting trial runs at their plants in July. Luxi Chemical’s 290,000 tonne/year MTO unit in Shandong province has its own methanol units. Once the MTO unit start-up, the company will stop selling methanol and sell olefins instead. Zhong’an Lianhe Chemical’s 600,000 tonne/year coal-to-olefin (CTO) unit in Anhui province has its own downstream polypropylene (PP) and polyethylene (PE) units. Further more such units are likely to get start up by October-November of this month.
