According to the analysis of PTA price changes in recent years, PTA price has two decisive factors. The first is supply and demand. In the case of imbalance between supply and demand, the relationship between supply and demand plays a decisive role in price; The second is cost-driven. Under the market situation of oil price fluctuation, the upstream cost transfer effect of petroleum-based petrochemical industry is remarkable. The price of PTA is largely controlled by raw material PX and oil price, especially when the price of PTA is quite close to the cost or even upside down, the force of raw material price change is very obvious. These two factors are often intertwined in reality. For example, the rise in crude oil prices in recent years will generally be quickly reflected in the price of PX (para-xylene), leading to the rise in PTA prices. Under the premise that downstream chemical fiber enterprises and textile enterprises can bear it, this cost change can be effectively transmitted downwards. But to a certain extent, once the PTA price is too high, which exceeds the market affordability of downstream enterprises, it will lead to poor sales of downstream products, decreased production and sales of polyester products, and increased inventory, which will follow. The polyester factory can't pass on the high cost at all, and the polyester will inevitably have a large-scale negative growth, and the reaction force of the downstream industrial chain will be transmitted to the upstream, thus reducing the market demand for PTA. Therefore, PTA market is not a simple cost-driven market, but a market with both cost-driven and demand-determining functions.
The application of PTA is relatively concentrated. More than 90% of PTA in the world is used to produce polyethylene terephthalate, and the rest is used as raw materials for products such as polytrimethylene terephthalate (PTT) and polybutylene terephthalate (PBT).
PTA production process can be divided into two parts: oxidation unit and hydrofining unit. Using acetic acid as solvent, raw material p-xylene is oxidized into crude terephthalic acid by air under the action of catalyst, and then the crude product is obtained by crystallization, filtration and drying in turn. Crude terephthalic acid is hydrogenated to remove impurities, then crystallized, centrifugally separated and dried to obtain PTA products.
Purified terephthalic acid is the main raw material for producing polyester fiber, resin, film and container resin, which is widely used in chemical fiber, container, packaging and film production. The raw material of PTA is xylene, and the raw material of xylene is petroleum. PTA is the raw material of polyester, and polyester is the raw material of polyester, while chemical fiber is 80% polyester, and chemical fiber accounts for 36% of the raw material of textile industry.