Mitsubishi to restart naphtha cracker

15-Sep-06

Mitsubishi Chemical Corp. plans to restart its 375,000 tpa naphtha cracker on Sept. 17, shut due to problems it encountered when restarting the facility. Due to the latest shutdown, Mitsubishi has lost about 8,000 tons of production of ethylene, increasing the total loss of output from the two unexpected shutdowns to about 33,000 tons. The company has said the restart process, if it goes smoothly, would take about three days to bring the cracker to full capacity. Earlier, Mitsubishi had shut down the cracker on Aug. 19 for inspections due to technical problems and began the restart process on Sunday following repair work.