**The National Development and Reform Commission has approved Xinjiang Tianchi Energy Co., Ltd.’s 2 billion cubic meters per year coal-to-natural gas project in Zhundong

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On June 13, the **National Development and Reform Commission approved Xinjiang Tianchi Energy Co., Ltd.’s 2 billion cubic meters per year coal-to-natural gas project in Zhundong! Xinjiang Tianchi Energy Co., Ltd. is a large-scale energy enterprise established by TBEA as part of its strategy to leverage the region’s abundant resources. It holds the exploration rights for four coal mines: the South Open-Pit Coal Mine and the North Open-Pit Coal Mine in the Zhundong Da Jing mining area in Xinjiang, as well as the No. 1 and No. 2 Open-Pit Coal Mines in the Xizhongxi Heishan mining area. The total proven coal reserves of these mines amount to 12.6 billion tons. On the evening of March 31, TBEA (600089) announced that in order to make full use of the company’s own coal resources, to achieve clean and efficient utilization of these resources, and to increase their added value, its wholly-owned subsidiary Tianchi Energy will invest in the construction of the Zhundong coal-to-natural gas project with an annual capacity of 2 billion Nm3, using its wholly-owned subsidiary Zhuneng Chemical as the main entity responsible for the project. The total investment for this project is 17.04 billion yuan. In April 2025, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment published a notice announcing the acceptance for review of the environmental impact assessment documents for Xinjiang Tianchi Energy Co., Ltd.’s 2 billion cubic meters per year coal-to-natural gas project in Zhundong. The project uses coal as raw material and employs fixed-bed slag gasification; syngas is produced through conversion and low-temperature methanol washing for purification. This syngas is then used in methanation to produce 2 billion cubic meters per year of synthetic natural gas (with an actual production volume of 2.04 billion cubic meters per year), while crude phenol and crude benzene are produced as by-products. Hydrogen is produced by electrolyzing water, and it serves as the hydrogen source for the methanation unit; the oxygen generated by water electrolysis is sent to wastewater treatment. The projects include fixed-bed slag gasification, shift cooling, low-temperature methanol washing, methane synthesis, drying and compression of synthetic natural gas, natural gas liquefaction, gas-water separation, phenol and ammonia recovery, hydrogen production by water electrolysis, carbon capture, and air separation. The project undertakes the following demonstration tasks: 1. Industrial demonstration of fixed-bed slag gasification suitable for high-alkali metal coal in the Junggar region. A large-scale fixed-bed slag gasifier with a gasification pressure of 4.5 MPa and an inner diameter of 3.8 meters is planned to be used. The methane content in the effective gas from fixed-bed slag gasification can reach around 8%, which helps to reduce the processing load in subsequent processes. 2 A large-scale industrial demonstration project for autonomous methanization technology is planned to be carried out to demonstrate this technology on an industrial scale. By combining wide-temperature conversion and methanation reactors in series and parallel, the capacity of the methanation unit has been increased from the maximum 1.375 billion cubic meters per year for a single unit in use to 2 billion cubic meters per year. The wide-temperature conversion process is employed to effectively reduce the reactor inlet temperature and make full use of low-grade thermal energy ； Energy savings and increased production in the methanation unit are achieved by reasonably distributing the fresh gas entering reactors at different levels. 3. The coal-based natural gas combined with green electricity hydrogen production demonstration project includes the construction of wind power and other renewable energy facilities, to ensure that no less than 51% of the electricity used by the remaining installations comes from green sources (in other words, 51% of the electricity supplied to those facilities, aside from that generated by the on-site ORC system, comes from green electricity). 4 Demonstration project for high-concentration carbon dioxide capture and storage: Construction of a carbon capture facility with an annual capacity of 900,000 tons. Among them, a carbon capture facility with an annual capacity of 700,000 tons will be built on-site, while another facility with an annual capacity of 200,000 tons will be constructed as part of the associated projects. 5 Fixed-bed slag gasification technology for the treatment and resource utilization of phenol-amine wastewater: The biochemical treatment of phenol-amine wastewater employs an intermittent high-multiplication biological treatment process (IMC process), which achieves high resistance to shock loads and high nitrogen removal efficiency.