The development of coal-to-oil should follow an energy supplement approach – Latest operational status of Yitai’s coal indirect liquefaction process
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This post was last edited by jordan569 on 2013-1-6 at 22:00. The development of coal-to-oil technology should follow an energy supplement approach. Update date: 2009-11-27. Our country has abundant coal, limited oil resources, and scarce methane resources. With economic development, the overall supply situation of petroleum products in our country is becoming increasingly strained, which has become a bottleneck for economic growth. The reliance on foreign sources is rising year by year, affecting our country’s resource and economic security. Under these circumstances, what development path should coal-to-oil production in China take? On November 25, a reporter interviewed Tang Hongqing, a senior engineer at Zhongke Synthetic Oil Engineering Co., Ltd. He believes that the development of coal-to-oil production in China should follow an energy supplement approach at present. Tang Hongqing said that China is a country short of oil – it does not have enough crude oil of its own, and it faces difficulties in purchasing oil from abroad; the Western countries are trying to prevent China from buying oil. Therefore, our country needs coal-to-oil technology as a supplement. But at the same time, China should keep pace with the rest of the world by using oil and natural gas, which are abundant resources. “Despite the great difficulties in importing oil and natural gas, we should make unremitting efforts to import more of these resources; at this stage, we should not recklessly exploit coal resources on a large scale. ”Tang Hongqing said. Tang Hongqing believes that it is reasonable to use the synthetic oil industry to appropriately fill the gap in petroleum supply, and to make use of the fact that China has richer coal resources than petroleum resources by appropriately replacing petroleum with coal. Coal-to-oil production can be positioned in coal-to-oil plants built using synthetic oil technology, which is in line with **the current energy strategy**. “Recently, China’s first FTO-based coal-to-oil demonstration plant – the 160,000-ton FTO oil production facility operated by Yitai Group’s Coal-to-Oil Company – has set a record by operating stably for over 2,000 hours. To date, 16,000 tons of oil products have been produced, and the quality standards of the diesel and naphtha produced meet or exceed national requirements. At the current price level of products produced on a small industrial scale, companies can remain profitable. This device has achieved remarkable results, such as stable operation after a 228-fold scale-up in a slurry bed reactor and a high efficiency in removing catalyst particles from the product, thus laying a solid foundation for constructing a plant with an annual production capacity of 900,000 to 1 million tons of oil products. The coal-based synthetic oil demonstration plant with an annual production capacity of 160,000 tons of F-T synthetic oil has achieved its construction goals, marking the gradual maturity of F-T synthesis diesel technology in China. ”Tang Hongqing said. Tang Hongqing explained that recently, in response to the issue of the large amount of lignite available in China, some scholars have proposed a grading liquefaction technique: first, lignite is coked at low temperatures to produce tar, which is then hydrogenated to yield oil products; the remaining semi-coke is gasified appropriately to produce syngas, which is further processed into oil products. By combining these two processes, more optimal oil products can be obtained. This technology can maximize coal-to-oil production and improve the efficiency of coal-to-oil conversion. This technology has the potential to significantly improve the energy utilization efficiency of coal-to-oil conversion. “It is a great idea; it represents a promising new approach for the coal-to-oil industry, and it will have a significant impact on our country’s coal-to-oil sector. We hope that our research team will achieve true independent innovation and historically develop China’s own intellectual property for coal-to-oil technology. Of course, it is quite difficult to implement this, mainly because there is still a need for breakthroughs in semi-coke gasification technology, as well as for a proper coordination among all the components of the process. ”He said. Tang Hongqing explained that this technology is currently being implemented. The total investment in this technical project is approximately 230 million yuan. Relying on the patented technology for coal hierarchical liquefaction developed by Zhongke Synthetic Oil Technology Co., Ltd., a large-scale pilot plant will be built to serve as a crucial intermediate step that enables the transition of coal hierarchical liquefaction technology from laboratory-scale tests to large-scale industrial production. The first phase of this project is expected to be completed by the end of this year. . Note $ # , $ $
This post was last edited by fossil-zhang on 2009-11-27 at 20:59. A brief explanation of this news. 1) Itai’s unit was put into operation in March of this year and ran for a month; after a six-month period of maintenance due to a fire in the oil storage tank, it was restarted in October. As of now, it has been in operation for 3 months, roughly 2,000 hours, during which time 16,000 tons of oil have been produced. It’s not clear whether this oil includes only diesel fractions and naphtha fractions – it’s unknown whether wax fractions are also included. 2) It’s certainly no problem for the product quality of Fischer-Tropsch synthesis to exceed national standards; this is the minimum requirement, so there’s nothing to praise about it. 3) “This device represents a 228-fold scale-up of the slurry bed reactor...”, and it is indeed based on a plant of the thousand-ton scale at the Coal Chemistry Institute (with an actual annual production of 700–800 tons); that is correct. 4) The Yitai facility is designed to have an annual production capacity of 160,000 tons. Based on the current production level, it is less than half of that designed capacity; it seems that the claims of it operating at full capacity are incorrect. So how can it be said that \"the coal-based synthetic oil demonstration facility with an annual FTO synthesis oil production capacity of 160,000 tons has achieved its construction goals\"? 5) Enterprises of this scale can now achieve profitability. It is said that the investment in Yitai’s production facility is between 1.8 and 2 billion yuan (this figure isn’t exact, but it’s not far off; it’s likely to be higher rather than lower). At least the investment needs to be recouped first before profitability can be achieved. Given the production volume reported, which is less than three months’ worth, I can’t see how profitability is possible. Those who are interested can calculate how long it will take to recoup the investment. There is no other meaning behind this interpretation; after all, this is China’s first commercial demonstration plant for coal indirect liquefaction that possesses fully independent intellectual property rights and features advanced technology. I hope this plant will achieve even greater success in the future. Those who are interested in learning more could please explain the above questions.
2# fossil-zhang Hehe, truly, those with expertise can see the nuances; the moderator’s analysis is thorough – I’ve learned something from it
This post was last edited by lewies on 2009-11-30 19:10. Sinocem Synthetic Oil lacks actual engineering design experience and thought that scaling it up would also make it easy to solve in terms of engineering! There are some things that cannot be spoken about. If a problem really needs to be solved, and China Science and Technology possesses excellent technical capabilities, then why would Shenhua spend so much money partnering with Sasol in South Africa?
If you talk about it superficially, people won’t know; but if you go into too much detail, it constitutes a leakage of trade secrets! Stop bragging! There was a big fire there last year as well.
Great. In any case, Yitai is a benchmark project for China. I wonder what’s happening with Lu’an now? Also, is Itai’s catalyst still capable of producing 1,000 tons of oil per ton of feedstock? Zhang’s analysis of fossils is thorough – true to the spirit of a scientist! I think the so-called profit is a misrepresentation of the concept; for example, only the costs of raw materials and operations are taken into account, while investment costs are not, meaning that return on investment is ignored. I did a rough estimate: if coal is priced at the mine exit price, 40% of the production capacity should be sufficient to maintain stability, with the investment paying off only in ten thousand years; whereas if coal is priced according to market rates, the more that is produced, the greater the losses will be. I guess the issue preventing an increase in production capacity lies in the FTO synthesis process, not in gasification. Either the catalyst continues to deactivate rapidly, preventing an increase in production capacity; the so-called stable operation is nothing but nonsense propagated by the media, so there’s no need to worry about it. Either the filtration process cannot keep up as well. It should be noted that in a slurry bed, the foam on the liquid surface can severely affect the filtering capacity of the filter; the filtering capacity per unit area is much lower than expected. If the pressure difference is increased, the filter will get clogged, while if the pressure difference is not increased, the production capacity can only be reduced. I bet a dollar it’s the latter. For the Yitai project that uses internal filtration, stopping operations is inevitable. Overall, there is still a solution; CAS is probably busy working on it.
An annual production of 160,000 tons would require water to be diverted from the Yellow River, and that’s without even reaching full capacity. What will happen if the production scale is increased in the future?
It is said that Lu’an’s current situation is similar to that of Yitai – production levels cannot be increased, and the facilities are not operating at full capacity. At least based on the current production levels, it is impossible to achieve 1,000 tons of oil per ton of catalyst. I also think the reason why the load cannot be increased is related to the issues with the Fischer-Tropsch synthesis process later on; it’s very likely that filtering problems are at fault. The claim that insufficient water supply for gasification is the cause of the low operation rate doesn’t hold up – wasn’t water supply taken into account when this scale was designed in the first place? To wait until the utilization rate is now insufficient before thinking of solutions for water issues – isn’t that ridiculous? If it’s a problem related to Fischer-Tropsch synthesis, there are several points to consider. The kiloton-scale pilot plant at the Coal Chemistry Institute is currently functioning well, and according to the institute itself, their catalysts perform better on a larger scale; in other words, the results obtained in pilot tests are better than those from laboratory tests, which in turn yield better results than those from smaller-scale tests. So if there are problems now, is it a matter of amplification? Amplifying it by more than 200 times isn’t a big issue for tubular reactors, but it does pose problems for slurry reactors – issues such as the internal filtration problem mentioned by Fu Yun, foam problems, and uneven reaction due to poor gas distribution, among others. Regarding the rapid deactivation of the catalyst, it is said that Etai’s facility has not been operating at full capacity since it started up. If catalysts used on such a scale become deactivated in a short period of time, it is either due to the catalyst itself (its preparation? ) There are serious problems; it’s unlikely that the coalification unit made this mistake. Either there are defects in the process engineering, and in slurry bed processes, the most common cause of rapid catalyst deactivation is uneven gas distribution within the reactor, leading to localized over-reaction and thus catalyst deactivation at high conversion rates. Apart from deactivation, there is the filtration issue as mentioned by Fu Yun. If Yi Tai’s devices (including those from Lu’an) use only internal filtration, there is a high likelihood of problems with filtration. Moreover, if the situations mentioned above occur, the catalyst is prone to becoming powdered, which further complicates the filtration process. Problems are actually a good thing; it is through encountering more problems that valuable experience can be gained. I truly hope that the domestic benchmark for indirect liquefaction does not face these issues. If they do arise, I hope they can be resolved successfully. Progress is made one step at a time.
The claim about a water shortage does seem strange; it’s just a project with an annual production capacity of 160,000 tons. Could it be that Lu’an also faces a water shortage, which in turn results in limited operation of the gasification process and lower production levels? If that is the case, the Fischer-Tropsch synthesis cannot operate under the designed conditions, which contradicts what has been reported; moreover, it was said that the conversion rate could reach 96%. You said, “According to the Coal Chemistry Institute itself, the larger the scale of their catalysts, the better the effect.” Is it their students who think that? If a seasoned technician says so, it’s less optimistic – the path remains quite tortuous. There is a small American company specializing in synthetic oils that has been struggling for many years; eventually, it was unable to continue operating and had to bring in external funding and give up control of the company. The reason for this was that its senior management and technical staff often used jargon, which made others disregard them. However, Zhongke should not have any problems in the domestic market, even though its behavior already resembles that of others. The real problem may be unknown to outsiders; generally speaking, it can be attributed to a lack of understanding of slurry beds. Some operational data is needed to determine exactly where the problem lies, such as the specific gravity of the catalyst, the space velocity, and so on. If you’re over there, I might be able to find someone who can give you some advice; if you manage to solve it, you’ll become super famous overnight, haha.
This post was last edited by fossil-zhang on 2009-12-2 at 12:00. The statement that “the larger the scale of their catalysts, the better their performance” was indeed made by a doctor involved in catalyst research at the coalification institute; according to them, catalysts used in pilot plants with a capacity of thousands of tons exhibit higher conversion rates and better stability under the same conditions as those used in laboratory settings. Moreover, at this year’s meeting on the acceptance report of a **major project** conducted by the Coal Chemistry Institute, the researchers there expressed the same view. When I heard that \"the bigger, the better,\" I was a bit confused. Some of the data reported at the outset of operation for these projects, such as conversion rates and catalyst production volumes, are likely based on pilot plants with capacities of several thousand tons, rather than reflecting the actual performance of these 160,000-ton plants. In any case, the results of experiments conducted in pilot-scale reactors using the catalysts from the pilot projects we were involved in were slightly worse than those obtained in the laboratory, and we used a fixed-bed configuration as well; moreover, the scale of scaling up was relatively small. Maybe it’s because our skill level isn’t high enough; we haven’t figured out the trick, haha. When scaling up catalysts, reactors, and similar components, many aspects cannot be maintained at the laboratory level. Issues can arise simply from factors such as the quality of raw materials, the degree of gas purification, and the stability of the equipment operation. Not to mention the various engineering problems that arise during scaling up, especially with regard to the internal components of slurry beds – components like heating elements, gas distribution devices, and filtration systems are highly prone to problems when scaled up. All of these require extensive testing to be properly verified, and accumulating such experience demands a significant investment of money and time. That’s why some people joke that indirect liquefaction is something only those who have plenty of money and time can afford to pursue. Indeed, without truly participating in these projects and coming into contact with the key aspects involved, it’s impossible to know where the problems lie; one can only make guesses, unless they are honest enough to **point out the problems. Things like the catalyst density and actual reaction conditions will be explained by those who are involved in them. I often read the data presented in published articles. Anyway, I’m not involved in these projects, so I have no chance of becoming an expert overnight, haha. Those who want to become experts should hurry up – this opportunity won’t last long.
Regarding Expert Tang’s suggestions, it seems that someone has criticized them before; he used to work in methanol conversion, and now that he is an advisor to the Chinese Academy of Sciences, he naturally advocates for indirect liquefaction.