Development Prospect of Hydrogenated Bisphenol A(HBPA)

Hydrogenated Bisphenol A(HBPA) is an important new resin raw material in the field of fine chemical industry. It is synthesized from Bisphenol A(BPA) by hydrogenation. Their application are basically the same. Bisphenol A is mainly used in the production of polycarbonate, epoxy resin and other polymer materials. In the world, Polycarbonate is the largest consumption field of BPA. While in China, there is a large demand for its down stream product, epoxy resin. However, with the rapid increase of polycarbonate production capacity, China’s demand for BPA continues to increase, and the consumption structure gradually converges with the world.

At present, China is leading the growth rate of supply and consumption of BPA industry. Since 2014, the domestic demand for BPA has generally maintained a stable growth trend. In 2018, it reached 51.6675 million tons, and in 2019, it reached 11.9511 million tons, with a year-on-year increase of 17.01%. In 2020, China’s domestic output of BPA was 1.4173 million tons, the import volume in the same period was 595000 tons, the export volume was 13000 tons, and China’s demand for BPA was 1.9993 million tons. However, due to the high technical barriers to the production of HBPA, the domestic market has long relied on imports from Japan and has not yet formed the industrialized market. In 2019, China’s total demand for HBPA is about 840 tons, and in 2020, it is about 975 tons.

Compared with the resin products synthesized by BPA, the resin products synthesized by HBPA have the following advantages: non toxicity, chemical stability, UV resistance, thermal stability and weather resistance. Except that the physical properties of the cured product are similar, the weather resistance is significantly enhanced. Therefore, HBPA epoxy resin, as a weather resistant epoxy resin, is mainly used in high-end manufacturing and application fields, such as high-value LED packaging, high-value electrical insulation materials, fan blade coating, medical device components, composites and other fields.

At present, the supply and demand of the global HBPA market is basically balanced, but there is still a gap in the domestic market. In 2016, the domestic demand was about 349 tons, and the output was only 62 tons. In the future, with the gradual expansion of downstream application scale, domestic HBPA has broad development prospects. The huge demand base of BPA market provides a broad alternative space for HBPA products in the high-end market. With the continuous upgrading of the world resin industry, the rapid development of new materials and the gradual improvement of end consumers’ requirements for product quality and performance, the excellent characteristics of HBPA will also replace part of the high-end market share of BPA and further promote China’s resin production and downstream application.