Summary: On 12 April, it was announced that the EI report of Ningxia Beilite's construction project of 102,000 t/a cyanamide downstream products—guanidines was to be approved by local authorities. The company has planned to build 102,000 t/a production capacity for raw materials of neonicotinoid insecticides, including 40,000 t/a guanidine nitrate, 30,000 t/a nitroguanidine, 12,000 t/a 1-methyl-3-nitroguanidine, 10,000 t/a 3-methyl-4-nitroiminoperhydro-1,3,5-oxadiazine and 10,000 t/a 2-nitroaminoimidazoline.

On 12 April, the Administrative Committee of Ningxia Pingluo Industrial Park announced that it was to approve the EI report of Ningxia Beilite Biotechnology Co., Ltd. (Ningxia Beilite)'s construction project of 102,000 t/a cyanamide downstream products—guanidines. The company has planned to build production lines of 40,000 t/a guanidine nitrate, 30,000 t/a nitroguanidine, 12,000 t/a 1-methyl-3-nitroguanidine, 10,000 t/a 3-methyl-4-nitroiminoperhydro-1,3,5-oxadiazine and 10,000 t/a 2-nitroaminoimidazoline in its existing plant in the Ningxia Pingluo Industrial Park, Shizuishan City, Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region.

The planned products are closely related upstream-downstream products; they can be used to synthesise neonicotinoid insecticides.

• Guanidine nitrate is an important intermediate of nitroguanidine, and nitroguanidine is a key intermediate used to synthesise 2-nitroaminoimidazoline and 1-methyl-3-nitroguanidine.
• 2-Nitroaminoimidazoline is mainly used in the production of imidacloprid.
• 1-Methyl-3-nitroguanidine can be used to synthesise several neonicotinoid insecticides such as imidacloprid, thiamethoxam, clothianidin and dinotefuran.
• 3-Methyl-4-nitroiminoperhydro-1,3,5-oxadiazine is an important intermediate of thiamethoxam.

Ningxia Beilite, founded in 2014, is a subsidiary of Ningxia Beilite Chemical Co., Ltd. (Beilite Chemical). It is a state-level high-tech enterprise, mainly engaged in the production of cyanamide downstream chemical new materials. In recent years, Ningxia Beilite has been proactively extending to cyanamide chemical downstream sectors, optimising its industrial structure, striving to improve added value of its products and promoting green development. The company, along with its parent company Beilite Chemical, aims at fostering an internationally competitive enterprise group and an industrial cluster.

Cyanamide downstream products are numerous, a leading group of which is guanidine compounds. With great strides made in the application of guanidines and nicotinoids in pharmaceutical and pesticide industries in recent years, market demand has ballooned for upstream guanidine intermediates, such as guanidine nitrate, nitroguanidine, 1-methyl-3-nitroguanidine and 3-methyl-4-nitroiminoperhydro-1,3,5-oxadiazine. Supply of these mentioned intermediates fails to meet the demand in China and overseas.

Seeing this huge demand, Ningxia Beilite thus launched this large-scale raw material project, which can take advantage of its existing production equipment for cyanamide downstream products and supporting facilities. It should be noted that Ningxia Beilite has already had active capacity of 30,000 t/a guanidine nitrate, 20,000 t/a nitroguanidine, 7,000 t/a 2-nitroaminoimidazoline, 7,000 t/a 1-methyl-3-nitroguanidine and 6,000 t/a 3-methyl-4-nitroiminoperhydro-1,3,5-oxadiazine. Unlike traditional batch production processes (using tank reactors for all products) adopted by the previous production lines, the new lines will adopt continuous and automatic production processes to produce guanidine nitrate, and automatic production processes to produce nitroguanidine (using advanced tubular reactor and continuous crystallizer). Ningxia Beilite will be a pioneer in applying whole-process automatic technology in production of these products. And the continuous tubular reactor it plans to use has the advantages of high mass and heat transfer efficiency, safety production, short reaction period, etc.