Coal chemical makes for environmental protection economy

Demonstration base construction

As a big coal province, Inner Mongolia has continued to adjust its industrial structure, extend its industrial chain, optimize its industrial layout and transform its development model in recent years. It has gone against the global economic recession and economic downward pressure in the autonomous region and carved out a new industrialization path using coal to produce power, chemicals and metallurgy.

In February 2005, Shenhua’s direct coal liquefaction project began construction. The project is the world’s first direct coal liquefaction industrialization unit. The project managed to put out qualified diesel oil and naphtha on Dec 31, 2008. In 2012, a total of 865,000 tons of oil products were produced.

In May 2006, Yitai’s coal indirect liquefaction project, China’s first synthetic oil unit with independent intellectual property rights, in the new Dalu district, began construction. The first bucket of qualified oil products was produced on March 27, 2009.

Datang Doren’s 460,000-ton coal to olefin project began construction in 2006. On March 16, 2012, the company officially went into trial production. As of Dec 20, 2012, a total of 393,000 tons of fine methanol and 66,000 tons of polypropylene were produced.

On August 30, 2009, Datang Keqi’s 4-billion-cubic-meter coal-to-natural gas project, the first of its kind, began construction. The first phase methanation device went into operation smoothly and put out qualified natural gas on July 28, 2012, marking the completion of technical process construction.

Other major projects include Shenhua Baotou’s coal-to-olefin project and Tongliao GEM Chemical’s 200,000-ton ethylene glycol project. Such major and good projects have helped Inner Mongolia build a modern coal chemical production demonstration facility.

Inner Mongolia is speeding up senior coal chemical technical personnel introduction and professional coal chemical technology development. It has actively boosted and planned construction of an outward coal chemical products transportation channel and built a rapid and convenient transportation channel to ensure industrialized coal chemical development.

Looking back on the coal chemical industry’s development in recent years, the development of Inner Mongolia has shifted from basic chemical raw materials to high-tech chemical products, from primary chemical products to high value-added high-end chemical products, and from extensive production to a resource-saving and environmentally-friendly model.

In recent years, the autonomous region has insisted on experimentation and demonstration. It continues to improve existing technology and equipment; strive for national support in gasification, purification, synthesis experimentation and domestic production of large-scale equipment; improve coal deep processing technology and equipment; and extend the industry chain to help more experimented and demonstrated technologies take root in Inner Mongolia. The region has focused on industrialization development. After the success of experimented and demonstrated projects, the follow-up project must be in place in time. Experiment and demonstration have to be scaled up, and a new production line should be built in short order to ensure positive results.

Edited by Liu Yufen and Michael Thai