Mitsubishi Chemical Corp, Japan's top petrochemical maker, said on Thursday it has boosted the operating rates of two naphtha crackers to compensate for lost output at its problem-hit third unit.
It has raised runs at the 496,000 tonnes per year (tpy) cracker at its Mizushima plant in western Japan and the 410,000 tpy No.1 cracker at its Kashima plant in eastern Japan, said a spokesman for the unit of Mitsubishi Chemical Holdings Corp <4188.T>.
The move comes as the Kashima No.2 naphtha cracker has been shut since Sept. 2 for an unplanned problem with the freezing system.
The company on Wednesday said it expected the unit, with capacity to produce 516,000 tonnes per year of ethylene, to be shut for about two weeks.
When the unit was shut down on Tuesday, the company had been reducing runs of its naphtha crackers to 80-85 percent of capacity, in line with earlier plans to cut ethylene output by 16,000-22,000 tonnes per month, from September until the end of December, amid weaker demand for petrochemical products.
The unexpected two-week shutdown is calculated to reduce the No.2 unit's ethylene output by around 20,000 tonnes, in line with cuts for the whole month of September, so the company decided to raise the runs of the two remaining crackers to keep its ethylene output plans largely intact, the spokesman said.
There were no injuries related to the shutdown of the No.2 unit this week. The No.2 naphtha cracker was damaged by a December 2007 fire, which killed four workers, and the company had been operating the facility at reduced capacity because two furnaces damaged by the fire are still inoperable.
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