Shenhua to start trial run of China's first CTL plant in 2008
Hong Kong (Platts)--17Sep2007
platts.com
China's largest coal company Shenhua Group will launch operation of the
country's first coal-to-liquids plant next year using its self-developed
direct coal liquefaction technology, the official Xinhua news agency reported
Sunday.
"We have finished 95% of the work at the first production line at Erdos
in the northern Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. The line will start trial
production next year," said Zhang Yuzhuo, who is in charge of Shenhua's coal
liquefaction business, at the ongoing China International Coal and Energy New
Industry Expo 2007 at Taiyuan city in the northern province of Shanxi.
Zhang said the first production line would use 3.45 million mt of coal
a year to produce 1.08 million mt of oil products including gasoil, liquefied
petroleum gas and naphtha.
Oil imports have been increased in recent years to fuel China's booming
economy, spurring the country to look for technologies that can turn some of
its coal reserves, one of the world's largest, into fuel and other chemicals.
The indirect liquefaction technology was first developed more than 70
years ago. It has been commercialized by South Africa's Sasol, the world's
biggest producer of motor fuel from coal. The direct liquefaction technology,
however, is yet to be industrialized, according to the Xinhua report.
On the basis of imported technologies, Shenhua has optimized the
production flow, built larger facilities and developed new-generation
activators to develop its own technologies, Xinhua quoted Zhang as saying.
Listed as a major national project to help deal with China's petroleum
security concerns, Shenhua's Yuan 12.3 billion ($1.63 billion) Erdos coal
liquefaction project began construction in August 2004. The project will have
an annual production capacity of 5 million mt of oil products, and development
will be completed in two stages. In the first stage, three production lines
will be installed.
Sasol, meanwhile, has plans to develop two CTL plants in cooperation with
Shenhua Ningxia Coal Group and Shenhua Coal Group, each with an annual output
capacity of about 3 million mt of oil products, using the company's
franchised Fischer-Tropsch technology. The company and its Chinese
counterparts are carrying out feasibility studies, Xinhua quoted Sasol China's
Executive Vice President Chen Liming as saying.
Shell and Shenhua Ningxia Coal Group have also agreed to study the
feasibility of a 70,000 b/d plant in China.
In fact, many Chinese coal companies are keen to develop CTL plants. But
the Chinese government raised the threshold for CTL projects last year fearing
that excessive development would result in pollution and strain water supply.
According to the Xinhua report, China's CTL plants would be able to
produce 50 million mt/year of oil products by 2020. Coupled with an annual
production capacity of 20 million mt of biofuels by then, the two alternate
energy sources would help reduce China's oil import dependency from the
current 60% to 45%. |
