Thread Content
According to CNPC News, with the development of China’s national economy and the increasing demand for low-carbon olefins, raw material resources such as naphtha and light diesel, which are used in the production of ethylene, are facing increasingly severe shortages. Therefore, the issue of accelerating the industrial application of the methanol-to-olefins process has attracted attention from all parties. Recently, substantial progress has been made in the industrial-scale testing of Methanol to Olefins (MTO) carried out through a collaboration between the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shaanxi Xinxing Coal Chemical Technology Development Co., Ltd., and Luoyang Petrochemical Engineering Company. As the participating parties gain a deeper understanding of the MTO process technology and engineering methods for producing low-carbon olefins from methanol as a raw material, the construction of an industrial-scale MTO testing facility with a capacity of 10,000 tons is progressing as planned; it is set to be completed by the end of the year and put into use for industrial testing. As a result, many industry experts have predicted that once MTO technology is successfully developed, it will effectively reduce the reliance of China’s chemical industries, such as those producing ethylene and propylene, on precious petroleum light hydrocarbon raw materials, thereby opening up a new pathway for olefin production. MTO refers to a chemical process technology that uses methanol synthesized from coal or natural gas as raw material, and employs a fluidized-bed reaction mechanism similar to that in catalytic cracking units to produce low-carbon olefins. As early as the 1970s and 1980s, the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics under the Chinese Academy of Sciences began research and development on the new MTO technology, which was later included in the key scientific and technological projects of the **\"Eighth Five-Year Plan\". During the research and development process, the institute not only carried out key technology developments such as mechanism studies, laboratory-scale tests, catalyst preparation, and pilot-scale scaling up, but also filed more than 20 patents at home and abroad, thereby establishing its own intellectual property rights. Meanwhile, researchers from the United States, Norway, Germany, and other countries have also invested human and financial resources in the development of new MTO processes. Currently, the representative MTO process technologies are mainly: UOP, UOP/Hydro, ExxonMobil, and the MTO process technologies developed by the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics in China. In the past, due to factors such as relatively low crude oil prices and high methanol production costs, this technology has not been put into industrial use, neither domestically nor internationally. Over the past decade, with the development of China’s national economy and the growing demand for low-carbon olefins, raw material resources such as naphtha and light diesel, which are used as feedstocks for ethylene production, have also faced increasingly severe shortages. Furthermore, since China’s crude oil imports last year accounted for one-third of its total processing volume, polyolefin products made from ethylene and propylene will continue to represent a fairly high proportion of imports. Given the relatively abundant coal resources in our country and their relatively low prices, accelerating the industrial application of the MTO process in areas rich in coal resources in order to diversify the raw materials used for ethylene production has not only become a topic of interest among experts and scholars in the industry but has also drawn significant attention from energy planning authorities and the leadership of the petrochemical sector. Loyang Petrochemical Engineering Company, which possesses extensive experience in the development of various process and engineering technologies such as catalytic cracking, is closely monitoring and keeping track of the advancements in MTO process technologies both domestically and internationally. Since the 1990s, the company has collaborated with the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences on the development of MTO process engineering technologies, and has undertaken the preliminary work for the vast majority of MTO projects carried out by domestic enterprises. Last August, through consultations with the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Shaanxi Xinxing Coal Chemical Technology Development Co., Ltd., the company officially signed a cooperation agreement for the \"Industrial Pilot Project for Producing Low-Carbon Olefins from Methanol.\" All parties agreed to first build a demonstration plant with a capacity of 10,000 tons, in order to fully understand and verify the issues that remain unresolved in the MTO process during the research and pilot stages. This approach aims to establish a solid and reliable technical foundation for the construction of larger-scale MTO industrial plants with capacities of millions of tons, thereby helping to develop new coal chemical routes in China for producing low-carbon olefins from non-petroleum resources. Experts involved in the development of MTO technology believe that, throughout the entire production chain for synthesizing methanol from coal or natural gas, producing low-carbon olefins from methanol, and refining and separating these low-carbon olefins, the MTO process for converting methanol into low-carbon olefins is the key to the whole process. The 10,000-tonne-scale MTO industrial demonstration plant under construction is intended to conduct engineering verification and assessments on issues such as the selection of MTO process technologies, the design of key equipment, the design of important equipment components, and the performance of catalysts in industrial applications, thereby providing valuable engineering experience for the industrialization of MTO. The construction of this device will undoubtedly play a significant role in promoting the industrial application of MTO. After a thorough technical and economic evaluation, experts from Luoyang Petrochemical Engineering Company concluded that, in an era of relatively low oil prices, the methanol-to-low-carbon olefins process lacks economic advantages over the traditional naphtha tubular cracking furnace process. Now that oil prices have soared to high levels of 45–55 dollars per barrel, MTO projects on a million-ton scale that use coal or natural gas-based methanol as raw materials exhibit good economic viability. Currently, the largest single-series natural gas-to-methanol plant abroad (5,000 tons per day) has been put into operation, while a larger-scale natural gas-to-methanol plant (7,500 tons per day) is under construction. Therefore, the MTO process technology holds good prospects for industrial application, and it will help alleviate or partially resolve the shortage of ethylene cracking feedstocks in China’s petrochemical industry.