Coal chemical industry: a successful model path

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Everyone has the right to choose how to contribute to society. The same is true for every type of energy resource; through human ingenuity, new ways are continuously developed to benefit human society. Coal is no exception; refusing to accept a fate of being simply burned, it has forged its way forward in the field of modern coal chemical technology, and during the 12th Five-Year Plan period it established a successful model for industrialization. In Shaanxi, dark coal has turned into colorless and transparent oil! On September 18, 2015, Yankuang Group announced that **the demonstration project – China’s first million-ton-scale coal indirect liquefaction project for producing future energy fuels, featuring independent intellectual property rights – was capable of producing high-quality oil products that met the Euro V standards. In Inner Mongolia, the Shenhua Baotou methanol-to-olefins project enabled China to achieve a breakthrough of \"zero\" in terms of core technologies and industrial applications for methanol-to-olefins production; by the end of 2014, it had generated an additional profit of 4.34 billion yuan. In Henan, coal can actually be “eaten” – such a remarkable transformation is truly astonishing. In early 2014, the world’s first production line for co-producing lipases from coal-based methanol protein was put into operation at Yimei Company of Henan Energy and Chemical Industry Group. All of this shows that the landscape of our country’s modern coal chemical industry is taking shape. For industrial development, technology comes first. In 2015, an important event took place in the field of modern coal chemical industry in our country. On January 9, the **Science and Technology Awards Ceremony was held at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. The technology for producing low-carbon olefins from methanol won the **First Prize for Technical Invention in 2014**. This technology, developed by the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics under the Chinese Academy of Sciences and featuring independent intellectual property rights, connects the main pathways of coal chemical industry and petrochemical industry, indicating that China holds a leading position in this technical field on the international stage. The Shenhua Baotou methanol-to-olefins project makes use of the technology from the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Marked by this as well, through continuous efforts during the 11th Five-Year Plan period and especially the 12th Five-Year Plan period, the technical barriers to developing China’s modern coal chemical industry have been removed. Apart from coal-to-aromatics, numerous modern coal chemical technologies with independent intellectual property rights have been successfully applied in large-scale demonstration projects. Modern coal chemical industry has opened up a new path for the conversion of coal and the realization of its value. According to statistics, during the 12th Five-Year Plan period, investments in coal chemical projects exceeded 500 billion yuan. In 2013, 2014, and the first half of 2015, amid the tough conditions in the coal market, coal consumption by the chemical industry increased by 9.9%, 10.2%, and 10.0% on a year-on-year basis respectively. The main driving force behind the rapid increase in coal consumption in the chemical industry is precisely the growth of the modern coal chemical industry. As of July 2015, the demonstration projects for coal-to-oil, coal-to-natural gas, and coal-to-olefins had reached their annual production capacities, which were 1.8 million tons, 3.33 billion cubic meters, and 3.7 million tons respectively. The coal-to-oil and coal-to-natural gas demonstration projects that have been approved by the **National Development and Reform Commission for preliminary work have an overall annual production capacity of approximately 15 million tons and 100 billion cubic meters respectively ； Some coal-to-olefins demonstration projects that are under construction or planned will have a combined annual production capacity of around 15 million tons. Currently operational modern coal chemical projects consume around 50 million tons of coal per year, while projects under construction or planned are expected to generate a coal demand of 580 million tons per year. Growth is often accompanied by doubt. Throughout its development, modern coal chemical industry has always been at the center of public scrutiny. Can’t solve pollution? Severe waste of water resources? Is energy efficiency not the best approach? Limited market capacity? Does the petrochemical industry really need this “useful supplement”? Victims of low oil prices? What does orderly development mean? Modern coal chemical industry cannot avoid these and even more doubts. Should nuclear power be developed? Zhang Zuoyi, director of the Institute of Nuclear Energy and New Energy Technologies at Tsinghua University, posed several rhetorical questions as answers: Should nuclear fusion also be given up? Can they give up nuclear weapons, nuclear-powered submarines, and nuclear-powered aircraft carriers? Is it truly impossible for humanity to technically solve nuclear safety issues? A similar rhetorical question might also apply to whether to develop modern coal chemical industry. Ni Weidou, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and a professor at Tsinghua University, clearly stated that from the perspective of cogeneration as a path for the efficient utilization of coal, coal chemical industry is an indispensable part of it. Advances in modern coal chemical technology and the development of related industries have created the conditions for advancing coal cogeneration and building integrated energy systems that combine resources, energy, and the environment. Scientifically understanding and answering various doubts is, in itself, a form of growth. “During the 12th Five-Year Plan period, the establishment of a mainstream understanding centered on \"standardization and order\" will surely guide the modern coal chemical industry toward a future of scientific and healthy development.