Published December 2001
This report presents economics for ten cases of strategic business units (SBUs), five each for the production of nylon 6 and nylon 66 resins. The SBU is an integrated operation, which combines the production of nylon resin with the production of precursor(s). The determination of the configuration of each SBU is based on the information of worldwide production capacities for nylon resins and their precursors. The latter include caprolactam (CAPM) for nylon 6, and adipic acid (ADA) and hexamethylenediamine (HMDA) for nylon 66.
This report presents economics of five processes for the production of CAPM, three processes for the production of ADA and two processes for the production of HMDA along with those of processes producing nylon 6 chips and nylon 66 resins. They are:
- Hydroxylamine phosphate (HPO) process, which uses phosphoric acid as hydroxylamine carrier, produces CAPM from phenol.
- Hydroxylamine phosphate (HPO) process, which uses phosphoric acid as hydroxylamine carrier, produces CAPM from cyclohexane.
- Nitric oxide (NOx) reduction process, which uses hydroxylammonium-ammonium sulfate as hydroxylamine carrier, produces CAPM from cyclohexane.
- CAPM from butadiene via methyl 6-aminocaproate by carboalkoxylation, hydroformylation and reductive ammoniation followed by cyclization with no ammonium sulfate by-product
- CAPM from butadiene via 6-aminocapronitrile by hydrocyanation and partial hydrogenation followed by cyclization; the process produces HMDA as a co-product and no ammonium sulfate by-product.
- ADA from cyclohexane by oxidation process
- ADA from butadiene by carboalkoxylation process
- ADA from benzene by partial hydrogenation process
- HMDA from butadiene by hydrocyanation process
- HMDA from butadiene via 6-aminocapronitrile by hydrocyanation and partial hydrogenation followed by cyclization; the process produces CAPM as co-product and no ammonium sulfate by-product.
This report also presents economics comparison among the SBUs.
