Paraxylene
The xylene isomer that becomes PTA and then polyester fibre and PET bottles; China now holds well over half of world capacity.
Commodity chemicals · Aromatics · No. 28
- Single chemical
- Feedstock: Oil, gas or coal
- about 57 Mt a year of demand (2024, indicative, basis: PTA demand x 0.66 t PX per t PTA)
- 1.4 t CO₂e per t
- HS 290243
Nearly every polyester shirt and plastic water bottle begins as one fussy molecule pulled out of refinery naphtha.
Chart: Illustration: Paraxylene
Where it comes from
Chart: Map of where it comes from
PX hides in the mixed xylenes that a refinery reformer makes from naphtha. Its siblings boil within a degree of it, so plants use zeolite beds that grab PX and recover over 97% per pass.
Three things to know
- About 97% of all paraxylene is turned into PTA, so its fortunes rise and fall with polyester clothing and PET bottles.
- China reached close to 47 Mt a year of PX capacity in 2024, yet still bought 9.6 Mt from abroad in 2025.
- As Chinese plants arrived, the margin over naphtha shrank from $462 a tonne in 2018 to $283 in 2024.
The journey
- 1 Crude oilRefined into heavy naphtha for reformers
- 2 ReformerNaphtha becomes benzene, toluene and mixed xylenes
- 3 PX separationZeolite beds pick out PX at 99.7%
- 4 PTAAbout 0.66 t PX per tonne PTA
- 5 PolyesterPTA plus MEG gives fibre, bottles, film