Authorized by National Development and Reform Commission, China petroleum and chemical engineering association evaluated on site the DMTO industrial experiment plant of Shaanxi Xinxing Co. Ltd. on June 17th, 2006. The 72-hours evaluation result is: one way methanol conversion is 99.18%, selectivity of ethylene and propylene is 78.71%. This indicated whole set DMTO technology with independent intellectual property rights had got important breakthrough, and it had established firm industrial technological base for constructing large-scale DMTO commercial project with capacity of thousands KTA(kilo tons per year) methanol feedstock.
Methanol to Olefins(DMTO) technology R&D project was listed as the national key industry technology R&D project, and was taken charge together by Shaanxi Xinxing Co. Ltd., DICP(Dalian institute of chemical physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences) and LPEC(China Petrochemical Luoyang petrochemical engineering company). The project had established DMTO industrial experiment plant with the capacity of 16.7 kta methanol feedstock first in the world in end of 2005, and commission was succeeded at a time in February 2006. The industrial experiment plant has run steadily for over 1100 hours till now, it is the only methanol-to-olefins industrial experiment plant.
Light olefins, which mainly were ethylene and propylene, were symbol products of the petrochemical industry. Conventional production of the light olefins was naphtha/ethane cracking with large consumption of crude oil. The production process route of DMTO is methanol via coal gasification to olefins. Therefore, DMTO process could not only convert the coal chemical to petroleum chemical, but also save lots of crude oil resource for China. It accords with the national energy safety strategy and the demand of sustainable development, and has important economical and social effects for Chinese energy comprehensive utilization and developing new coal chemical industry.
Whereas our industrial experiment plant is the only 10kta plant in the world, we compared our results with the results of the UOP lab pilot plant and proved the DMTO technology achievement is in the leader in the world.
The inside authorities deemed that the DMTO technology is the core technology of developing Chinese new coal chemical industry. The success of the DMTO industrial experiment indicated the time of coal chemical challenging petroleum chemical has come. DMTO process has the large better economical efficiency than conventional naphtha-to-olefins, consequently, the project has great economical potential and industrialization future.