Mitsui Chemicals: GTR in the Post-crisis Era     

On September 16th, CCR gave an interview to Yasushi Nawa, Executive Officer and General Manager, New Business Development Division of Mitsui Chemicals. Mr. Nawa introduced CCR the business scope of the New Business Development Division, which was just founded in October 2009 for developing new business in the following 10-20 years. The business covers new energy, environmental solution, agriculture food business, and creates new idea of business models. He also shared some current activities of the new division.


New Energy   

The practice that is related to new energy is solar energy, which is made from silicon. Theoretically, solar energy is an energy source with the most potentiality for grid parity. The source of the power is virtually inexhaustible (the sun). Solar energy produces no pollution, no carbon footprint, no odorous emissions, and no annoying noise.
    However, Mr. Nawa says that it will never replaced the existing water potential energy (Gravitational potential energy is stored in the water above the dam) because of its disadvantages in cost. The average cost of using water potential energy is about 7 Japanese Yen per kilowatt-hour, but the actual cost of solar power using silicon as raw materials is more than 40 Japanese Yen per kilowatt-hour. But the good news is that there are organic materials under development to replace the silicon to cut the cost. One is Dye Sensitized Solar Cells (DSSC), another is organic thin film cells. Mr. Nawa says that major chemical companies are developing or under research for the latter, but Mitsui has considerable strength in technology to develop dye for the former use because the company has started the research on dye in early 1990s. He discloses that there may be a possibility that Mitsui will produce some products using DSSC in the next three to five years. All of the company's solar energy will be generated from organic materials, which has great advantages in cost than using toxic materials, such as silicon, mercury, lead, and cadmium.


New resources   

"In the next ten to twenty years, fossil resources will be running critically short. You have to find other resources to replace fossil resources, such as biomass, carbon resources. There's the fact that Japan itself is rather poor in natural resources, and CO2 is the last resources we could rely on."
   Greenhouse Gas to Chemical Recourses (GTR) is another green concept under the post-crisis economy. Solution of climate change and carbon dioxide emission is always the focus topic in recent years, and GTR technology is being put forward for its bright prospect.
  Mitsui has established a GTR pilot plant at Osaka with capacity to produce 100 t/a of methanol and it has been on stream since March 2009. The project uses carbon dioxide exhausted from chemical factories after purification. The company is looking for parterres to establish CO2-based methanol in Singapore, China or any place in the rest of the world. Another raw material is hydrogen, which has the main tough problem in steady supply. Mr. Nawa says he was very happy when he heard on the China Petroleum and Chemical International Conference that Shaanxi Yanchang Petroleum (Group) Co., Ltd has large surplus of hydrogen in its production process.

Mr. Nawa also mentioned that Shanghai Sinopec Mitsui Chemical Company Limited (SSMC), a joint venture established in 2006 by Mitsui Chemicals Incorporated and Sinopec, will build a plant for the production of acetone and phenol in Shanghai. The acetone and phenol products will be mainly supplied to the emerging market of China which Sinopec and Mitsui will cooperatively develop. SSMC was originally founded to produce and sell bisphenol A (BPA) in China, and the company produces about 120 000 metric tons per year of BPA.


    Yasushi Nawa has been with Mistui since 1978, when he joined Mitsui Petrochemical Industries, Ltd. He was appointed to deputy managing director of Mitsui Chemicals Asia Pacific in 2007 before moving on to Managing Director in June 2008. Mr. Nawa took on his current position in October 2009.