Thread Content
Key milestones in Yanchang Petroleum’s 500,000 tons/year coal-based ethanol project have been achieved. Author/Source: Gasification World. Date: May 24, 2022. Clicks: 15. On May 18, the control room in the central building of Yanchang Petroleum’s 500,000 tons/year coal-based ethanol project was put into use, marking the official operation of the project’s production control center. It is understood that the center covers an area of about 160 square meters and is currently equipped with an advanced global DCS control system, a set of dispatch telephone control systems, and a video surveillance system. The plan also includes adding a set of LED video walls, a set of electronic large-screen displays, three units for operating the global DCS control system, and a set of dispatch telephone control systems. It integrates multiple functions such as production scheduling, emergency command, video surveillance, remote supervision, and comprehensive management, enabling resource sharing and information exchange. The operation of this center provides a foundation for the company to improve its scheduling and management capabilities, coordinate safe production processes, supervise various production stages, and gain a comprehensive understanding of production operations, thereby enhancing the level of standardization in safety and quality management. It serves as a guarantee for the company’s production system to achieve \"full-process control and centralized command,\" and it represents an important step forward in making the company’s production processes more standardized, regulated, and scientific. Next, the Production Planning and Operations Department will aim for \"smooth information flow, effective command, and safety along with efficiency,\" further optimizing scheduling management, improving the professional skills of scheduling personnel, and fully leveraging the functional role of scheduling and command to provide strong support and assurance for the safe, stable, and efficient progress of the project’s commissioning process. Recently, good news came from the site of the Yushen 500,000 tons per year coal-based ethanol project. With the successful sealing of 12 tanks, including those used for circulating methanol in the tank area (the intermediate tank area), methanol intermediate buffer tanks, and ethanol testing tanks, the storage and transportation workshop has completed an important milestone task and is now fully equipped to receive methanol and ethanol products. It is reported that the entire tank area consists of four sections: the central tank area along with its pump station, the dimethyl ether tank area along with its pump station, the finished product tank area along with Pump Station 1, and the finished product tank area along with Pump Station 2. There are a total of 35 mechanical pumps and 28 storage tanks, giving a total tank capacity of approximately 60,415 cubic meters; the area covered by these tanks is about 63,720 square meters. Among them, the intermediate tank area includes 1 tank for unqualified ethanol, 2 tanks for ethanol testing, 4 intermediate buffer tanks for methanol, 2 tanks for circulating methanol, 2 tanks for ethyl acetate, and 1 tank for unqualified methyl acetate. In order to complete the tasks on schedule, the storage and transportation workshop took proactive measures, made early arrangements, and coordinated efforts from all relevant parties. It overcame various difficulties such as a large number of remaining tasks, a shortage of personnel, material shortages, and the impact of the pandemic, successfully completing tasks such as the commissioning of 3 methanol unloading pumps, the purging and pressure testing of pipelines in the vehicle loading/unloading area and the intermediate tank area (with a total of 98 pressure testing sections and 27 kilometers of long-distance pipelines as well as pipelines within the facility undergoing such testing), and the sealing of 12 tanks. By doing so, it succeeded in overcoming these challenges and laid a solid foundation for the subsequent successful testing of the ethanol project. The 500,000 tons per year coal-based ethanol project of Yanchang Petroleum in Yushen utilizes the dimethyl ether carbonylation technology for ethanol production, which was developed jointly by Yanchang Petroleum and the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, enabling an annual output of 500,000 tons of ethanol. The project requires an investment of 6.98 billion yuan and is located in the South Area of Qingshui Industrial Park, Yushen Industrial Park, Yulin City, Shaanxi Province, covering an area of 1,365 mu. Construction of this project officially began on November 6, 2018, with the goal of reaching full capacity and meeting the required standards by 2022. The construction scope includes a methanol complex (units such as coal unloading and storage, gasification unit, shift converter unit, purification unit, gas separation unit, methanol production unit, sulfur treatment unit, etc.), an ethanol plant (units such as dimethyl ether production, carbonylation, hydrogenation, separation, compression, heating furnaces, refrigeration stations, etc.), as well as new constructions for utility systems and auxiliary facilities; the design capacity is 1.22 million tons of coal to be converted per year.