Modern coal industry has entered a period of high quality transformation

"Regardless of innovation capability, product structure, industrial scale, process technology management and equipment manufacturing, China's modern coal chemical industry has been at the forefront of the world and has become a bright spot in the innovation and development of the petrochemical industry. It is the key year for the implementation of the 13th Five-Year Plan and the starting year for the compilation of the 14th Five-Year Plan. The modern coal chemical industry has entered a new stage of high-quality transformation. Li Shousheng, president of the China Petroleum and Chemical Industry Federation, said recently at the "2019 (8th) China International Forum for the Development of Coal and Chemical Industry". Few words affirmed the hard-won achievements, but also highlighted the arduous tasks of the future, which immediately triggered the resonance of the forum venue.

This two-and-a-half-day meeting gathered more than 600 representatives from major domestic coal chemical enterprises, upstream and downstream partners, scientific research institutes and so on. There is only one core issue that people pay attention to - how to take a new path to improve and upgrade the industry based on the key stage.

The annual conversion capacity of coal in the whole industry is more than 250 million tons, and the four main products have achieved a "simultaneous increase in quality" as a unique industry in China. Coal chemical industry is an important way of clean and efficient utilization of coal, as well as an important supplement to clean energy and petrochemical industry. At present, the industry can achieve an annual coal conversion capacity of more than 250 million tons, and the industrial scale and product output have achieved steady growth.

Li Shousheng uses a set of figures to give an intuitive explanation. Up to now, China's annual production capacity of coal-based oil, coal-based gas, coal-based olefins and coal-based ethylene glycol has reached 9.21 million tons, 5.105 billion square meters, 9.32 million tons and 4.38 million tons respectively. In the first half of this year, the actual output of the four products has increased by 14.1% and 2.8 million tons respectively. 5.5%, 10% and 56.4%. "The output of the main products of the modern coal chemical industry has made another breakthrough since this year." At the same time, the operation level and production efficiency of the project are optimized synchronously. Taking the first demonstration project of direct coal liquefaction in Ordos as an example, Li Shousheng introduced that in 2011-2018, the project produced 6.6 million tons of oil products, and the production load was maintained at about 85% for a long time. The single-cycle stable operation exceeded 420 days, far exceeding the original design of 310 days.

Zhang Jiming, assistant general manager of National Energy Group, has a personal feeling about this. "In the field of modern coal chemical industry, China has become the country with the most key technologies, the most active independent innovation and the fastest industrialization progress in the world." Zhang Jiming, for example, has long been criticized for the high water consumption brought about by the endowment of raw materials, which once became the biggest problem hindering the development of the industry. Nowadays, the water consumption of the project has been decreasing, and it has been lower than the average level of the national industrial industry. Through technical optimization, the oil and water consumption per ton of the project of indirect liquefaction of millions of tons of coal decreased from 12 tons to 6-7 tons, and the water consumption per ton of the project of 600,000 tons/year coal-to-olefin decreased from 36.5 tons to less than 20 tons.

Driven by the project, Li Shousheng said that the pattern of parks and bases of modern coal chemical industry has initially taken shape. "The project is mainly located in 14 large-scale coal bases planned and constructed by the state, and 9 large-scale coal and power bases. At present, it mainly cultivates Ningdong Energy and Chemical Industry Base, Yulin Energy and Chemical Industry Base and other coal deep processing industrial agglomeration areas." Only by breaking out a new path comparable to petrochemical industry can modern coal chemical industry achieve sustainable development with achievements and challenges. Facing the forthcoming "14th Five-Year Plan", many participants pointed out that in order to achieve high-quality transformation, multiple tests from inside and outside the industry deserve attention.

Firstly, external competition shocks. Li Shousheng said frankly that in recent years, China's large-scale refining and chemical integration projects have accelerated development, and the overlap of petrochemical and coal chemical products will inevitably lead to more intense market competition. "Many private enterprises take the initiative to extend from the downstream to the upstream, opening up the whole industrial chain of crude oil processing, chemical products and textile products;"Three Barrels of Oil"and other central enterprises also break the traditional mode of oil production and actively extend to the downstream high-value-added chemical products; international oil and petrochemical giants are also rushing to the Chinese market to build up a possession. The world's leading level of integration projects. Only by breaking out a new path comparable to petrochemical industry can modern coal chemical industry achieve sustainable development. In addition to competitive factors, Xie Kechang, academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, said that oil price and supply, resource allocation and taxation, credit financing and return, environmental capacity and emission reduction are also important external factors. "In some periods and regions, these factors are either single or superimposed. In addition to the irresistible factors, optimizing the external environment is an important condition for bringing into play the comparative advantages of coal chemical industry and enhancing its competitiveness, which can not be ignored. In Zhang Jiming's opinion, the core of competition lies in cost and characteristics. Especially with the arrival of the era of large refining, the production capacity of China's petrochemical products has met the market demand, and some products have obvious surplus. The "backward" production capacity with small scale, high cost and homogeneity will be eliminated. "In this context, compared with large-scale integrated refining and chemical projects, coal chemical industry is not dominant. The latter has a large investment per unit capacity, which is 5-10 times the investment intensity of petroleum refining unit capacity; the product structure is single, and the existing projects can only produce 1-2 main products due to the limitation of scale, lacking difference and uniqueness. Similar to the integrated base of petroleum refining and petrochemical industry, it needs to invest at least 100 billion yuan in coal chemical industry.