Market Research Center – Junyuan Petroleum Group
In the past two years, n-Heptane has been performing well. Although the overall market demand is not good, most of the demand for n-Heptane comes from the pharmaceutical industry, especially the API (Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients ) industry. On the contrary, with the adjustment of national policies in China, the pharmaceutical industry is developing vigorously, so the market demand of n-Heptane is commendable.
In addition, because the relative stability of H-heptane is slightly better than that of n-Hexane, many enterprises have replaced n-Hexane with n-Heptane in the past two years, which is also a fundamental reason for the rise of n-Heptane market and the decline of n-Hexane.
In 2020, the market of n-Heptane is still developing steadily, and the demand is increasing slowly. Export is the development direction of n-Heptane. In fact, the export of n-Heptane is increasing greatly in recent years. In the future, the annual demand of n-Heptane is expected to reach 50,000 tons / year.
In 2020, with the gradual shrinkage of the market of general solvent oil and aromatic solvent oil, special oils such as n-Hexane, n-Heptane, Isoalkanes, D-series solvent oils gradually stepped onto the stage of the new year. From raw materials to downstream, from technology to policy, due to the second dip in the global economy, new pattern and changes have taken place in the solvent oil market, and Sinopec’s refineries have adjusted their product structure to withdraw from the solvent oil market.
As said above, the market of n-Heptane in China is not large, which is about 30,000-40,000 tons but not more than 50,000 tons per year.
Then why is n-Heptane always mentioned in the industry? Because n-Heptane plays an irreplaceable role in the field of pharmaceutical intermediates. At least, no effective substitutes for n-Heptane have been found.
In the past, n-Heptane was mainly relied on imports, most of which were Korean SK products. Now, Korean SK also accounts for a large sales share in the domestic market. In the past two years, due to the development of coal to liquid, the bottleneck of domestic n-Heptane manufacturers like Junyuan Petroleum Group has been greatly broken through, and today’s domestic n-Heptane has a foothold in the market.
Before, the domestic production of n-Heptane was based on petroleum basis 120 solvent oil. Due to the limited raw material conditions, the content of n-Heptane produced was just close to 97%, which was difficult to reach 98%. Even if the content reached 98%, the yield of the product could not come up, resulting in increased production costs.
With the advent of normal stable light hydrocarbon in coal chemical industry, the production of n-Heptane content can reach more than 98% effortlessly. Last year, China industry only took one year to make the content of n-Heptane more than 98%, which popularized the market. This year, it will take one year to popularize the 99% content of n-Heptane. In the future, the market will be content of n-Heptane 99%, and the quality will be more and more better. The quality is getting better, the price is getting cheaper.
Coal to n-Heptane has high yield and low production cost, which is the development trend of n-Heptane in the future. In the future, the market will become more and more difficult. Therefore, we can only work hard on the product technology to make the quality standard of products reach another higher level, which is also the inevitable law of the development of things.
Last year, it is estimated that several manufacturers failed to put into production successfully for some reason, so n-Heptane is still in a tight market stage. As more and more terminal enterprises replace n-Hexane with n-Heptane, more than 97% of the n-Hexane market will gradually shrink.