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New Process for Producing Methanol from Electric Arc Furnace Off-Gases Author/Source: Sinochem New Network Date: May 14, 2019 Clicks: 7 Leveraging its years of technical expertise and experience in the comprehensive utilization of coke oven gas, China Chemical Siding Engineering Co., Ltd. has developed a new process for producing chemical products such as methanol using electric arc furnace off-gases as raw materials. At present, a number of methanol production projects that utilize this new process are under construction, including Hanbo’s 100,000 tons per year methanol plant, Xufeng Xinchuang’s 150,000 tons per year methanol plant, and Inner Mongolia Ruizhi’s 170,000 tons per year methanol plant – all of which use blast furnace exhaust gas to produce methanol. Industry experts believe that the process of using the exhaust gases from electric arc furnaces to produce chemical products such as methanol makes effective use of the useful gas components CO and H2 present in these exhaust gases, thereby generating chemical products with high added value. This not only improves the efficiency of comprehensive utilization of electric arc furnace exhaust gases and helps to establish a circular economy chain, enhancing the competitiveness of enterprises, but it also reduces the emission of waste substances such as CO2, improving the ecological environment. It represents a new green and energy-saving approach to utilizing electric arc furnace exhaust gases. Ferroalloys are essential auxiliary materials in steelmaking, with their usage accounting for around 4% of the total steel production. Currently, the annual production of ferroalloys across the country is approximately 32 million tons. It is understood that regions such as Inner Mongolia and Ningxia have now become major production areas for ferroalloys, with an annual output of nearly 10 million tons. During the production of ferroalloys, large amounts of low-sulfur blast furnace exhaust gas with a calorific value of around 2300 kcal/Nm3 are generated. The revised \"Access Requirements for the Ferroalloy Industry\" in 2015 stipulated that ferroalloy manufacturers must ensure that their blast furnaces are fully enclosed by the end of 2018, and that the capacity of these furnaces must be ≥25 MVA. After being sealed, electric arc furnaces inevitably generate large amounts of exhaust gas, so the treatment and utilization of such exhaust gas have become a key issue in the ferroalloy industry. It is understood that electricity is the main resource consumed in ferroalloy production. Therefore, in regions with high electricity prices such as Guangxi, Guizhou, Shanxi, and Shandong, power generation represents the most economical way to make use of the exhaust gases from electric arc furnaces, and this technology is currently in the process of being promoted. In areas like Inner Mongolia, which benefit from pilot programs for direct power supply and thus have very low electricity costs, the vast majority of the exhaust gases from electric arc furnaces are released directly into the atmosphere, with only a small portion being used as fuel gas for combustion. This not only causes significant environmental pollution but also results in waste of resources. Therefore, for these regions, producing chemical products using blast furnace exhaust as a raw material will become an important technical direction. Laiding Engineering Co., Ltd., leveraging its technical advantages and experience accumulated over the years in the comprehensive utilization of coke oven gas, has developed, through technological innovation, process routes for producing chemical products such as methanol, hydrogen, and ethylene glycol from the exhaust gases of electric arc furnaces. In the newly developed process route, they adopted for the first time the high-concentration CO copper-based isothermal transformation process as well as the desulfurization process with high oxygen content, thereby completing the entire process flow. This process route features a simple flow, low energy consumption, low investment, and high efficiency, with all equipment for the project capable of being manufactured domestically. Calculations show that an iron alloy production capacity of 10 million tons per year corresponds to a methanol production capacity of at least 3 million tons. This setup can also result in a reduction of 4.11 million tons of CO2 emissions and 0.26 thousand tons of SO2 emissions, while saving 640,000 tons of standard coal compared to power generation using gas.