Explosion at China's Xinjiang Yihua carbide plant

According to market sources, an explosion took place at 3.30am on 12 February 2017 at Xinjiang Yihua Chemical Group’s carbide plant, causing two casualties and 8 injuries. The cause of the explosion is classified as a result of electric short circuit at the No. 5 carbide furnace and No. 2 electrode material surface. The unit is now offline and the restart date is undefined.

Located at Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, China, the company is able to produce 900,000 tons/year of carbide feedstock. This is expected to worsen the supply tightness condition for carbide in the country and might stem stricter environmental control action from the government.

At the same site, the company own a carbide based PVC unit which produces 215,000 tons/year. At the moment, there is no confirmation on whether this PVC line is affected by the incident. The company’s other carbide based PVC units in Hubei area (Hubei Yihua) are still operating at normal rate at the time this report in published. The combined carbide based PVC capacity of this company stand at 1.2 million tons/year.