I have a question: what is the difference between MTO and DMTO? What does D stand for?

Low-carbon olefins such as ethylene and propylene are the foundation of the modern chemical industry, and the traditional production method is light oil cracking. With the development of the social economy, the demand for oil has far exceeded domestic production; nearly 50% of crude oil relies on imports, and the self-sufficiency rate for ethylene is less than 40%. The imbalance between supply and demand is becoming increasingly prominent. China’s resource situation is characterized by a shortage of oil and natural gas resources, while coal resources are relatively abundant. Developing coal chemical technologies that use coal as a raw material to produce petroleum-based products and implementing an oil substitution strategy is a crucial issue for the long-term stable development of China’s economy and its energy security. It is also the inevitable choice for realizing the strategy of using coal in place of oil, and the technical bottleneck in this regard is the Methanol-to-Olefins (MTO) technology. The development of industrial technology for methanol-to-olefins production was based on the research achievements of MTO technology at the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, where this technology has reached world-class levels and independent intellectual property rights have been established. By drawing fully on the engineering techniques of fluidized catalytic cracking, an industrial test facility capable of processing 50 tons of methanol per day was built to carry out and complete industrial-scale tests, thereby laying a solid technical foundation for the construction of large-scale methanol-to-olefins plants in China with an annual methanol processing capacity of millions of tons. To show that the developed MTO process can also be applied to dimethyl ether as a feedstock, the process was named DMTO.

In China, the “D” in DMTO stands for the initial sound of the character representing Dahuasuo； There is also Sinopec’s SMTO, where S stands for Sinopec. The main difference in the technologies of various MTO manufacturers likely lies in the catalysts, while the processes differ little.

There is a difference: one is the production of olefins from methanol, and the other is the production of olefins from dimethyl ether

It’s too complicated; I’d better study it properly* first

I’m confused now; I don’t know which one is correct ? ?

D--refers to the first letter of the pinyin for Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics.

One is the production of olefins from methanol, and the other is the production of olefins from methanol via dimethyl ether; D stands for the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics

I heard Dr. Liu say that D has two meanings: one refers to the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, and the other refers to the process by which methanol is converted into olefins through dimethyl ether； It is generally understood as the methanol-to-olefins technology of the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics.

Whether it is MTP or MTO, according to the reaction mechanisms that are currently widely accepted, methanol must first go through dimethyl ether before turning into olefins. The difference is that MTP (the Lurgi process) includes a dimethyl ether reactor in its process: dimethyl ether is produced first and then fed into the MTP reactor, with both reactors being fixed-bed types. In contrast, MTO (including UOP’s MTO technology and DMTO) does not have such a reactor; methanol vapor enters directly into the fluidized-bed reactor. The letter “D” in DMTO stands for Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, serving to distinguish it from UOP’s patented MTO technology. Additionally, the main products of MTO are ethylene and propylene, whereas the main product of MTP is propylene. The ethylene to propylene ratio in MTO is around 1:1, while ethylene in MTP is a by-product.

DMTO includes MTO; the principles behind them are different. MTO is the process of producing olefins from methanol, whereas DMTO is the process of producing olefins from dimethyl ether/methanol. Thus, the letter \"D\" in DMTO has two meanings: it refers to the Dalian Institute of Physical Chemistry, as well as dimethyl ether