Production
Acetic acid is produced industrially both synthetically and by bacterial fermentation. About 75% of acetic acid made for use in the chemical industry is made by the carbonylation of methanol, explained below. Alternative methods account for the rest. The biological route accounts for only about 10% of world production, but it remains important for the production of vinegar, as many food purity laws stipulate that vinegar used in foods must be of biological origin. As of 2003 - 2005, total worldwide production of virgin acetic acid was estimated at 5 Mt/a (million tonnes per year), approximately half of which was then produced in the United States. European production stood at approximately 1 Mt/a and was declining, and 0.7 Mt/a were produced in Japan. Another 1.5 Mt were recycled each year, bringing the total world market to 6.5 Mt/a. Since then the global production has increased to 10.7 Mt/a (in 2010), and further, however, slowing increase in production is predicted. The two biggest producers of virgin acetic acid are Celanese and BP Chemicals. Other major producers include Millennium Chemicals, Sterling Chemicals, Samsung, Eastman, and Svensk Etanolkemi.
Read more about this topic: Acetic Acid
Famous quotes containing the word production:
“The myth of unlimited production brings war in its train as inevitably as clouds announce a storm.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“An art whose limits depend on a moving image, mass audience, and industrial production is bound to differ from an art whose limits depend on language, a limited audience, and individual creation. In short, the filmed novel, in spite of certain resemblances, will inevitably become a different artistic entity from the novel on which it is based.”
—George Bluestone, U.S. educator, critic. “The Limits of the Novel and the Limits of the Film,” Novels Into Film, Johns Hopkins Press (1957)
“From the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”
—Charles Darwin (1809–1882)