Outage at Mitsubishi Naptha Cracker No-2 in Kashima
05 Sep '08
1 min read
Due to an unfortunate incidence at Kashima, a Mitsubishi Chemical Corp owned plant in Japan, the No.2 naphtha cracker of the company has been kept closed since September 2.
Official sources informed Fibre2fashion that an abrupt problem of leakage in the re-joint as well as a disruption in the freezing system led to this shut down.
Total production capacity of the naphtha cracker is 4,50,000 tons per year and sources confirmed that production at the unit would restart in about two weeks time.
However, to counteract the slowdown in production at Kashima, Mitsubishi has boosted the operating rates at two of its other naphtha crackers – a 496,000 tons per year (tpy) cracker at its Mizushima plant in western Japan and another a 410,000 tpy No.1 cracker at its Kashima plant in eastern Japan.
The unexpected two-week shutdown is calculated to reduce the No.2 unit's ethylene output by around 20,000 tonnes, so the company decided to raise the runs of the two remaining crackers to keep its ethylene output plans largely intact.