Jinhua furnace achieved target output after 100 days of continuous operation

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The Jinhua Furnace operated continuously for 100 days, meeting all performance standards and reaching its full production capacity. Author/Source: Jinhua Furnace; Date: June 15, 2021; Page views: 21. On June 10, a site meeting regarding the long-term stable operation of the Jinhua Furnace 3.0’s radiant waste heat boiler—which produces steam efficiently—was held in Shihezi, Xinjiang. The landmark Jinhua Furnace 3.0 has been operating continuously, stably and efficiently at Xinjiang Tianye Huihe New Materials Co., Ltd. for over a hundred days. It generates 97,000 standard cubic meters per hour of useful gas per furnace, along with by-products of 9.0–9.8 megapascals and 60 tons per hour of saturated steam, thus setting a new milestone. Photo / Site meeting on the stable long-term operation of Jinhua Furnace 3.0’s radiation waste boiler in achieving full steam production capacity; key leaders from Xinjiang Tianye (Group) Co., Ltd., Lu’an Chemical Machinery (Group) Co., Ltd., Donghua Engineering Technology Co., Ltd., Tsinghua University’s Shanxi Clean Energy Research Institute, the China Petroleum and Chemical Industry Federation, Beijing Qingchuang Jinhua Technology Co., Ltd., and representatives of authoritative industry experts attended the event to witness this milestone moment together. Li Lixin, Deputy Secretary of the Party Committee and General Manager of Donghua Technology, and Wu Yuefeng, Deputy General Manager and Chief Engineer, attended the meeting. Li Bin, vice president of the China Petroleum and Chemical Industry Federation, said that gasification technology is the key technology for the clean and efficient conversion and utilization of coal, and the research, development, and application of Jinhua furnaces have shaped the development direction of water-coal slurry gasification technology in China. Jinhua Furnace 3.0 was successfully deployed in the gasification unit of the 600,000 tons per year ethylene glycol project built by Xinjiang Tianye Huihe, which boasts the largest single-unit capacity in the country. The steam generated as a by-product of this furnace operated stably for 100 days at full capacity, with excellent performance indicators; this represents another milestone in the successful application of Jinhua Furnaces. Song Xiaoling, Party Secretary and Chairman of Xinjiang Tianye (Group) Co., Ltd., noted that the 600,000 tons per year ethylene glycol production project built by Xinjiang Tianye in conjunction with Jinhua’s Furnace 3.0 has been operating stably for over a hundred days, making it the first entity in the country to achieve this milestone. Li Lixin, Deputy Secretary of the Party Committee and General Manager of Donghua Engineering Technology Co., Ltd., said that as the design unit for the project, Donghua Technology was involved throughout the process and witnessed the ‘stable, efficient, long-lasting, and high-quality’ performance of the Jinhua Furnace 3.0 unit. Leveraging its strength in integrating all aspects of engineering projects, it proposed optimization solutions regarding the completeness of the gasification process package, the suitability of the overall process, and the rationality of equipment layout, thereby helping to ensure a seamless integration of the Jinhua Furnace 3.0 gasification technology with the syngas-to-ethylene glycol production technology developed by the High Chemistry and Donghua Technology consortium. This gasification unit is part of the 600,000-ton/year ethylene glycol production facility within the first phase of Xinjiang Tianye’s 1 million tons/year syngas-based ethylene glycol production project. The gasification technology utilizes the water-cooled wall waste boiler technology for water-coal slurry developed by Beijing Qingchuang Jinhua Technology Co., Ltd. (Jinhua Furnace 3.0). There are a total of four sets of 6.5MPa Jinhua furnaces with 3.0 gasification units, operating in a three-in-one-backup configuration. It is currently the largest coal-to-ethylene glycol project that has been built in China. The fact that the Jinhua furnace operated continuously for over 100 days this time proves its stability and reliability, indicating that Jinhua Furnace 3.0 is capable of operating safely and stably at full load for extended periods of time. The fact that the Jinhua furnace has been operating continuously for over 100 days is closely linked to the efforts made by Xinjiang Tianye Gasification Branch in terms of operation and emergency handling, professional skills training, and maintenance support. Xinjiang Tianye reaches another partnership with Jinhua Furnace: A review of the Jinhua Furnace 3.0 project. In July 2017, a meeting was held to discuss the process package for the production of 600,000 tons per year of ethylene glycol as part of Xinjiang Tianye’s first-phase project aimed at producing 1 million tons per year of syngas for ethylene glycol production. In April 2019, the 3.0 version of the furnace at Xinjiang Tianye Jinhua was successfully installed. In July 2020, the project construction and commissioning were completed, making it ready for chemical feed-in and operation. The Jinhua Furnace 3.0 gasification unit was successfully ignited on July 28. On July 29, the feeding of water-coal slurry was successful on the first attempt, and effective gases (CO+H2) were produced successfully; all performance indicators were within normal ranges, laying a solid foundation for the subsequent production of intermediate product methanol and end-product ethylene glycol in this project. On August 1, the methanol production process was successfully started up; on August 20, the dimethyl oxalate intermediate was produced; and on August 24, polyester-grade ethylene glycol was successfully manufactured with a purity of 99.96%. This marked the completion of the entire production process and the entry into operational phase for this project. The whole startup process was carried out safely and efficiently, setting a benchmark for the commissioning of large-scale coal chemical plants in the industry. After less than a year of operation, by addressing and optimizing the issues that arose during its operation, the limitations that affected the safe and stable full-load operation of the gasifier were eliminated. The fact that the gasifier was able to operate at full load for over 100 days indicates that the production capacity and technical performance parameters of the Jinhua Furnace 3.0 have reached the design values. Xinjiang Tianye’s next step with the Jinhua furnace: In the near future, the Jinhua furnace team will continue its pursuit of technological advancement by developing a gasification technology for the Jinhua furnace that allows for a daily coal input of 3,000 tons, along with full heat recovery – namely the Jinhua Furnace 4.0 version – and by building demonstration units for this technology. Building on the existing technology of water-cooled wall radiation-type waste heat gasifiers for coal slurry, a convective steam generator is added downstream of the radiation-type steam generator used for high-temperature syngas in these gasifiers. This arrangement enables further recovery of the heat from the high-temperature syngas, thereby improving energy efficiency and advancing the development of coal gasification technology in terms of energy conservation. It will provide important support for the growth of China’s modern large-scale coal chemical industry. Looking forward to the next meeting between Xinjiang Tianye and Jinhua Furnace.