【Ten Years of Great Progress in Chemical Technology】Construction of Ningmei’s 12.1135 billion yuan worth DMTO-III and olefin separation project along with related facilities commenced from 2012 to 2023
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The last edit to this post was made by Desert Fish on 2023-7-5 at 09:06. In May 2023, the kick-off meeting for the overall design of the MTP process technology upgrade project for Ningxia Coal Industry Co., Ltd. of the Energy Group, which was undertaken by China Tianchen Engineering Co., Ltd., was successfully held. On the morning of July 3, a meeting to advance the construction of the second batch of major projects at the Ningdong base in 2023 was held at the construction site of the MTP process technology upgrade project of **Energy Group Ningxia Coal Industry Company. Construction unit: Olefin Branch 1 of **Energy Group Ningxia Coal Industry Co., Ltd.** Location of construction: Area A of the Modern Coal Chemical Industry Zone in the Ningdong Energy and Chemical Industry Base, Ningxia, covering an area of 67 hectares. Total investment: 1,179,339 million yuan, of which 370,910 million yuan is allocated to environmental protection measures. Scope of construction: The project involves the construction of one set of DMTO and olefin separation equipment with an annual capacity of 1.35 million tons, one set of EVA production equipment, one set of LDPE production equipment, one set of HDPE production equipment, and one set of butene-1 production equipment. Additionally, auxiliary and environmental protection facilities such as a circulating water system, storage tanks, warehouses, dedicated railway lines, waste gas treatment systems, sewage pre-treatment facilities, initial rainwater collection tanks, and accident containment tanks will be built. All other facilities and equipment will make use of those already existing in the area. Production scale: 100,000 tons per year of ethylene-vinyl acetate copolymer (EVA), 300,000 tons per year of low-density polyethylene (LDPE), 300,000 tons per year of high-density polyethylene (HDPE), and 700,000 tons per year of polypropylene (PP). Ningxia Coal Olefins Branch 1 currently has two olefin production units with a capacity of 500,000 tons per year, both of which produce polypropylene. Affected by the decline in propylene prices and the consumption tax imposed on gasoline-grade oils, the company’s olefin plants suffered severe operational losses, leading to the decision to upgrade the MTP process.
On June 25, a tender announcement was issued for the competitive procurement of olefin technology licensing, process package development, and related services for Ningxia Coal Industry’s 2023 MTP process technology upgrade project. On June 22, a tender announcement was issued for the competitive procurement of technology licensing, process package development, and related services related to the Butene-1 component of Ningxia Coal Industry’s 2023 MTP process technology upgrade project.
DMTO process at the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences. The Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (abbreviated as DICP) began research on MTO in the 1980s, and in the early 1990s it developed internationally the first \"new process for producing low-carbon olefins from syngas via dimethyl ether\" (abbreviated as SDTO method). This process consists of two reaction stages. In the first stage, syngas is converted with high selectivity into dimethyl ether using a metal-zirconia bifunctional catalyst. In the second stage, dimethyl ether is converted with high selectivity into low-carbon olefins such as ethylene and propylene using a SAPO-34 molecular sieve catalyst. Subsequent technological advancements have simplified this process by enabling the direct conversion of syngas into olefins via methanol, with the SAPO-34 molecular sieve catalyst being used in a dense-bed circulating fluidized bed reactor to facilitate this catalytic conversion from methanol to olefins. The catalyst series available include the DO123 series (primarily for producing ethylene) and the DO300 series (primarily for producing propylene). In 2004, the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Shaanxi Xinxing Coal Chemical Technology Development Co., Ltd., and Sinopec Luoyang Petrochemical Engineering Company collaborated to develop the complete industrial technology for DMTO. An industrial test plant capable of producing tens of thousands of tons of olefins from methanol was built, and the industrial tests were completed in 2006; the methanol conversion rate was nearly 100%, with a selectivity of over 90%. In August 2010, the world’s first million-ton-scale industrial facility using the DMTO process was put into operation – the Shenhua Group’s coal-to-olefins project in Baotou, Inner Mongolia. The project includes a coal-based methanol plant with an annual capacity of 1.8 million tons, as well as a polyolefin (polyethylene, polypropylene) integrated petrochemical plant with an annual capacity of 600,000 tons. The methanol conversion rate is over 99.9%, while the selectivity for ethylene + propylene is above 80%; the products meet the specifications required for polymer-grade olefins. Image: Based on the DMTO process, the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics further developed the DMTO-Ⅱ process. This process adds recombination and cracking units for C4 and higher hydrocarbons; that is, the C4 and higher components produced by the olefin separation unit are fed into a cracking reactor. The cracking reactor is of the fluidized bed type, and the catalyst used in the catalytic cracking unit is the same one employed in methanol conversion. Within the fluidized bed reactor, the C4+ components undergo catalytic cracking to produce mixed hydrocarbon products primarily consisting of ethylene and propylene. The resulting mixed hydrocarbon is mixed with the methanol conversion product gas and fed into a separation system for separation. By adding more cracking units, the yields of ethylene and propylene can be increased from 80% to around 85%, reducing the methanol consumption per ton of light olefins from 3 tons to 2.6–2.7 tons; moreover, the yield of dienes is 10% higher compared to the DMTO process. In this process, the same catalyst is used for both the C4+ conversion reaction and the methanol conversion reaction. Both the methanol conversion system and the C4+ conversion system employ a fluidized bed process, thereby enabling coupling between these two systems. In December 2014, the DMTO-Ⅱ industrial demonstration plant was successfully commissioned at Shaanxi Pucheng Clean Energy Chemical Co., Ltd., producing polymeric-grade propylene and ethylene. In recent years, DMTO technology has been put into industrial use and licensed for more than 20 plants in China, resulting in a total olefin production capacity of over 10 million tons per year. Based on the DMTO-Ⅱ technology, the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics is actively researching DMTO-Ⅲ technology in order to increase the processing capacity of a single DMTO unit from the current level of 1.8 million tons per year to over 3 million tons per year, while ensuring that the methanol conversion rate and olefin selectivity remain at levels no lower than those achieved with DMTO-Ⅱ technology. The institute completed the development of the catalyst for the DMTO-III technology as well as the laboratory-scale scale-up of the reaction process in 2019, and began working on the preparation of a process package for a production capacity of millions of tons in 2022.
【Ten Years of Great Progress in Chemical Technology】The third-generation methanol-to-olefins (DMTO-III) technology was evaluated as a scientific and technological achievement between 2011 and 2020. https://bbs.hcbbs.com/thread-4201725-1-1.html (Source: Haichuan Network)