[Basic Chemicals] A quick guide to new products: Why is succinic acid getting so much attention?
Pingtouge has already published several articles in the "quick guide to new products" series. Some of these products aren't really new—the industry just hadn't paid much attention to them before—but we'll lump them into the "new products" series anyway. Previous ones include: "A quick guide to new products: What's the trend for OBC new materials?", "A quick guide to new products: What's the future outlook for PBE?", "A quick guide to new products: What's the future outlook for POP elastomers?", "A quick guide to new products: What's the market outlook for China's POF shrink film?", "A quick guide to new products: What's the future market for tert-butylamine?", "A quick guide to new products: This product's annual consumption demand is growing over 10%, yet China can't meet supply—what happened?", "A quick guide to new products: Dioxolane—how's the market potential for this new product?", "A quick guide to new products: How's the ethylamine market?", "A quick guide to new products: What's the market outlook for perfluoropolyether?", "A quick guide to new products: How's the PVP (polyvinylpyrrolidone) market?", "A quick guide to new products: What's the market outlook for PVDF (polyvinylidene fluoride)?", and others. Interested readers can click or search to browse them.
Recently, industry friends have raised many questions with Pingtouge, mostly based on new observations and opportunities arising from changes in the chemical industry. These mainly center on the market impact of shifts in industrial structure, along with some short-term high attention on certain industry chains. Among them, succinic acid has drawn relatively high attention lately.
Why is succinic acid getting so much attention? Pingtouge thinks it's partly because of the development opportunities across the entire industry chain brought by the biodegradable plastics industry, and partly because of downstream chain extension opportunities from maleic anhydride products.
This article will provide some market analysis of succinic acid.
According to Baidu Baike, succinic acid—also known as amber acid, ethylene dicarboxylic acid, 1,2-ethanedicarboxylic acid, and ethanedicarboxylic acid—is a dicarboxylic acid. Succinic acid is a dibasic carboxylic acid containing two reactive methylene groups. It can undergo various reactions such as halogenation, dehydration, esterification, sulfonation, acylation, oxidation, and reduction. It can serve as an intermediate for synthesizing many complex organic compounds and can also be used to make pharmaceuticals. It is widely used in industries such as synthetic plastics, food, medicine, and pesticides.
Succinic acid has many process routes, including catalytic hydrogenation, paraffin oxidation, acrylic acid carbonylation, electrolytic synthesis, and fermentation. Currently, the process routes that have achieved industrial production are mainly catalytic hydrogenation, electrolytic synthesis, and biological fermentation. Domestic and international production methods for succinic acid include electrolytic synthesis, catalytic hydrogenation, and biological fermentation. Electrolysis technology for producing succinic acid is mature and has been industrialized, but it faces challenges such as high power consumption, electrode corrosion, and unsuitability for large-scale production. Although catalytic hydrogenation and biological fermentation have been industrialized, the technology still needs further optimization.
Depending on the production process, there are two raw material routes for succinic acid. One is catalytic hydrogenation or electrolytic synthesis of maleic anhydride to further produce succinic acid. The other is fermentation of corn starch, followed by screening and separation to obtain succinic acid product. Either way, industrial-grade succinic acid can be produced.
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