【Ten Years of Great Development in Chemical Equipment】The Process of Domestic Production of Methanol Plants from 1984 to 2016

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　　The internationally advanced methanol synthesis industry relies on large-scale plants, with each plant typically having a production capacity of several million tons; the largest plants currently have an annual production capacity of 2.25 million tons. China’s methanol industry began in the 1950s, and high-pressure methanol synthesis plants were built in Lanzhou, Taiyuan, and Jilin using zinc-chromium catalysts based on former Soviet technology. During the 1960s and 1970s, the Wujing Chemical Plant in Shanghai built methanol synthesis units using coke and naphtha as raw materials. The Research Institute of Nanjing Chemical Industry Company developed medium-pressure copper-based catalysts for the simultaneous production of ammonia and methanol, thereby promoting the industrial development of ammonia synthesis coupled with methanol production. In the 1970s, Sichuan Vinylon Factory introduced China’s first low-pressure methanol synthesis unit, which used acetylene off-gas as raw material and employed the ICI low-pressure cold-quenching synthesis process. In the mid-1980s, Qilu No. 2 Chemical Plant introduced a Lurgi low-pressure methanol synthesis unit that used residue oil as raw material. After the 1990s, with the rapid growth in demand for methanol, hundreds of methanol and dimethyl ether production plants were built using both imported and domestic technologies, enabling unprecedented progress in methanol production in China. 　　In 2010, China’s annual methanol production capacity was 37.5 million tons, accounting for about 50% of the world’s total capacity. Its production volume accounted for around 32% of the global total, while its apparent consumption accounted for approximately 45% of the world’s total consumption, making China the largest producer and consumer of methanol in the world. According to incomplete statistics, China’s annual methanol production capacity reached 76.7 million tons in 2015, and it is expected to reach 98.68 million tons by 2020. 　　China’s synthetic methanol industry has grown from nothing to something substantial, expanding rapidly over more than 20 years. Today, the latest technologies used in China’s small and medium-sized synthetic methanol plants (with a capacity of 300,000 tons per year) are generally at the world’s advanced level. However, large-scale methanol production facilities in China with a capacity of millions of tons have not yet been fully localized; significant efforts are still needed in areas such as large-scale methanol production processes and large reactors in order to break foreign monopolies in this market. 　　In 2011, China’s first domestically produced gas-cooled methanol synthesis reactor successfully passed hydraulic and pneumatic tests at CNNCC’s Xinhe Company; the strength and sealing performance of the equipment met the requirements specified in the drawings and relevant standards. This air-cooled synthesis reactor was developed on the basis of adapting the British David process. With the same volume per individual unit, it requires less material in total, its weight is reduced by nearly 30%, production energy consumption is significantly lowered, while output is greatly increased.