Shenmu Coal Chemical Dongxinyuan Company: New technologies for the clean, differentiated use of coal drive a revolution in the industry

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Shenmu Coal Chemical Dongxinyuan Company: New technologies for the clean, differentiated utilization of coal drive industry transformation
Author/Source: Shaanxi Coal and Chemical Industry Group Co., Ltd.
Date: June 29, 2020
Clicks: 7

Recently, Shenmu Coal Chemical Dongxinyuan Company has focused on developing innovation strategies aligned with the industrial chain, achieving true clean and comprehensive utilization of coal by making full use of all its components. This has led to the creation of an optimized green circular economy industrial chain for the differentiated utilization of coal, which includes processes such as comprehensive mixing and pyrolysis of coal (lump coal, semi-lump coal, fine coal) to produce clean semi-coke, waste gas, and coal tar; hydrogen production from waste gas; further processing of hydrogen and the gases generated during pyrolysis; hydrogenation of coal tar; power generation using those gases; and using semi-coke as fuel for pyrolysis processes. The key to this approach is the technology developed by Dongxinyuan Company for producing hydrogen from waste gas without the need for conversion processes. This technology has been rated by experts in the coal chemical industry as being at the international leading level, and it has enabled a revolutionary upgrade and high-quality development in the field of comprehensive coal utilization. According to the company’s head of production technology, this set of process technologies and their industrial application completely revolutionize the traditional methods used for producing chemical products such as methanol, synthetic ammonia, and urea from coal through full gasification. Its greatest advantage lies in the fact that, during the clean production of coal, not only is clean semi-coke produced, but all other useful components can also be utilized efficiently, with no waste gases emitted. Moreover, all the waste gas generated during semi-coke production can be fed into an oxygen-based hydrogen production system to extract hydrogen, thereby increasing the amount of hydrogen produced by a factor of several. This reduces the cost of hydrogen production by at least 50%, lowering the raw material costs associated with hydrogen use and opening up new opportunities for development. Moving downstream, it is possible to use coal tar for hydrogenation to produce fuel oil, and the industrial chain can be further extended to produce methanol, synthetic ammonia, urea, etc. This approach enables green, environmentally friendly, and efficient utilization of resources, helping companies achieve optimal and maximum profits while fostering high-quality development. At present, Dongxinyuan Company’s circular economy industrial chain for the clean and comprehensive utilization of coal, with coal tar hydrogenation to produce fuel oil as its core, is operating at full capacity in a safe and stable manner. In practical production, it exhibits five distinct advantages. ——The cost of the coal used as raw material for lignite carbon production has **decreased**, while the yield of coal tar has increased. With the advancement in pyrolysis technology for the combined combustion of lump coal, small-grain coal, and thin-coal, there are no longer restrictions imposed by traditional lignite production methods regarding the type, specifications, and volatile matter content of the coal used. As a result, small-grain coal, thin-coal, or coal varieties with lower volatile matter content, which were previously unusable, can now be fed into lignite furnaces for combined combustion pyrolysis. In this way, the procurement cost of raw coal alone can be reduced by 8% per ton of semi-coke, the total coal consumption can be lowered by 15%, and the yield of coal tar can increase by 1 percentage point. ——The amount of raw gas available for downstream production increases exponentially, as does the hydrogen content, resulting in the lowest hydrogen production costs. With the successful application of the technology to replace coke oven gas with desorbed gas, the outdated practice of sending over 55% of the waste gas generated in traditional coke production back to the coke ovens for combustion as a heat source for coal pyrolysis has been changed. Now, 100% of the produced raw gas can be fed into the hydrogen production system to extract all the hydrogen, thereby doubling the amount of hydrogen produced and reducing the hydrogen production cost by 50%. ——All the desorbed gas is utilized. After hydrogen is extracted from the non-shift oxygen-based hydrogen production system using waste gas, the calorific value of the remaining desorbed gas can reach 1500 kcal; this gas can be used for power generation as well as as a fuel to be fed back into the semi-coke furnace to provide heat for coal pyrolysis, or it can be used in semi-coke drying beds for drying semi-coke. ——The power generation cost is the lowest. Dongxinyuan Company’s independently developed \"industrial application of gas-solid two-phase mixed fuel blending technology in circulating fluidized bed boilers\" allows power generation to be carried out entirely using coal slurry and desorbed gas, resulting in almost zero production costs for electricity generation. ——Green and environmentally friendly. In the clean production process of semi-coke, the coal tar produced is converted into fuel oil through hydrogenation; as for the raw gas generated, after all the hydrogen has been extracted, the remaining desorbed gas is also used as fuel. There is no exhaust gas released, and not a single resource is wasted. At the same time, through the independently developed \"coal chemical integrated production technology for the separated treatment of wastewater and zero-emission process,\" true zero emissions are achieved, thereby ensuring genuine environmental sustainability.