China's Coal to Chemical Future
China's Coal to Chemical Future
In this post, I give an overview of developments in China to create a coal to chemicals industry, primarily using methanol as an intermediary feedstock. In doing this research, to my surprise, I found that the Chinese chemical economy is advancing rapidly in its use of coal as a chemical feedstock, as opposed to crude oil in other countries. In many cases, coal already represents 20% or more of chemical feedstocks, and in special cases such as PVC, the country already sources virtually all of its input from coal. Since China produces 20% of the world's PVC, such transitions have a substantial impact on the global energy system.
Since 2000, China has been investing an increasing amount into the production of coal-based petrochemicals, substituting these for traditional crude oil based processes. The plausible reasons are the cheap price of coal and the strategic desire to be self-sufficient in resource inputs. The industrial base originally focused on five areas of petrochemical replacement. More recently, the industry is gearing up to produce other petrochemicals by Chinese R&D, and through establishing technology partnerships with non-Chinese players such as TOTAL Oil Company.
The primary raw chemical input produced from coal is methanol, which is produced through coal gasification and subsequently, methanol synthesis and refining (see picture below for overview of process steps).
Today, methanol is used to produce a wide variety of chemicals including formaldehyde, MTBE, acetic acid, DME, esters, olefins, and other products. These are used for fuels, pesticides, medicines, plastics, fibres, resins, etc. China currently produces approximately 25% of the world’s output of methanol.
More at the link
