Solvents Business in China
                     Yu Jing
       China National Chemical Planning Institute
1. Present situation
There is a long history in pro-duction of solvents in china
. in the past,the acetone and butanol  were mainly produced
through fermentation process and used corn as raw materials.
At  present, the major part of  acetone  and  butanol  are
produced by synthetic process.
at present, total output of the prodution which can be used
as solvents reached about 6400 thousand tons, the  imports
were about 1600 thousand tons and the  export  were  about
200 thousand tons. the apparent consumption was about 7800
thousand tons. of which the consumption  of  solvents  was
about 2600 thousand tons, accounting for about 32% of  the
total consumption. the remainder(68%) were mainly used  in
the prodution of chemical industry and  pharmaceutical  as
feedstock.
The following tables  show  recent  output  for  production
used as solvents and the composition of solvents in China.
Table 1. the recent output of the products used as solvents
                                                ('000t/a)
        Solvent                         Output
  Alcohol                                 4520
  Ketone                                   160
  Esters                                   120  
  Paraffins and Arometics                  660
  Ethylene (propylene) glycol ether        10
  Chlorohydrocarbon                        70
  DMF                                      30
  Solvent naphtha                          800
  Total                                    6370
Table 2. The Composition of solvents in China ('000t/a)
              Solvent                      Consumption   Proportion,%
  Alcohol                                      500           20
  Ketone                                       120           5
  Ether                                        170           7
  Paraffins and Aromatics                      940           36
  Ethylene (propylene) glycol ether            30            1
  Solvent naphtha                              820           31
  Total                                        2580          100
2. supply/demand
The table 3 summarizes the supply/demand  relationship  for
the production used as solvents for 1996 in china .
    From table 3 we can see some products' imports are very
large, which were equal or more than their output,   which
include butanol, acetone, MEK, toluene,   mix  xylene  and
ethlene (propylene) glycol ether etc.  so  china  plan  to
expand these production capacities  in  2000  or  2010  in
order to meet the demand of domestic market.
3. consumption
The large end-use markets mainly include  coating,   rubber
industry,adhesives, pharmaceutical and  pesticides  etc. ,
which are shown below. the coating output was  about  1700
thousand tons in 1996. of which water-base or non- solvens
coating account for about 15%. the  remainder  of  coating
output was about 1445 thousand  tons  which  consumed  650
thousand tons of solvents. the output  of  adhesieves  was
about 1200  thousand  tons  in  1996,   solvent- adhesives
account for 25% of overall adhesives, which consumed about
150 thousand tons of solvents. about 300-350 thousand tons
of solvents were  used  in  pesticide  industry  in  1996.
  china's  ribber  industry