Coal Chemical Industry: Climbing to the World's Highest Point

In 1949, China's coke output was only 525,000 tons, and all the process equipment used depended on imports. It was not until 1958 that China built the first mechanized coke oven with independent intellectual property rights, the coking oven of Beijing Coking Plant. Subsequently, driven by the rapid development of iron and steel industry, China's coking industry entered the fast track of development.

The start of China's synthetic ammonia industry is equally difficult. After the founding of New China, in order to meet the urgent needs of agricultural development, four ammonia plants were built in the 1950s. After that, the general design of "three catalysts" process for 50,000 tons/year ammonia synthesis was creatively completed, and ammonium bicarbonate plants covering most counties were built. From the late 1970s to the early 1990s, more than a dozen large-scale modern synthetic ammonia plants were introduced from abroad, which ended the era when fixed bed intermittent coal gasification technology dominated China's synthetic ammonia industry.

As a typical representative of traditional coal chemical industry, China's calcium carbide industry was also developed on the basis of the old open-ended calcium carbide furnace provided by the former Soviet Union. It once became a synonym of the calcium carbide industry for its high energy consumption, heavy pollution and difficulty in recycling tail gas. In order to solve this problem, in the 1970s and 1980s, China successively introduced 35,000 KVA, 25,500 KV closed calcium carbide furnace and large ferroalloy electric furnace technology, and finally independently developed large-scale calcium carbide furnace manufacturing technology, which provided a strong support for clean production in the stone industry. After the introduction, digestion, absorption, improvement and innovation, the level of traditional coal chemical technology and equipment in China has improved significantly. Driven by the strong growth of domestic demand, the traditional coal chemical industry has stepped into the fast lane of sustained growth, with the production scale of coke, synthetic ammonia and calcium carbide ranking first in the world. With the rapid development of petrochemical industry, global oil shortage appears, and coal, as the dominant energy in China, has been given a new mission. In the mid-1990s, China proposed to vigorously develop clean coal technology, and identified 10 key directions in four major areas, opening up a new era of leapfrogging development of modern coal chemical industry in China.

After years of scientific and technological research, especially through the project demonstration and promotion since the 11th Five-Year Plan, China's modern coal chemical industry has made breakthroughs in key technology research, independent development of major equipment, product variety development and expansion of production scale.

Advanced coal gasification technology is flourishing. In recent years, China has developed a number of advanced coal gasification technologies, such as multi-nozzle opposed coal water slurry gasification, Aerospace pulverized coal pressurized gasification and Tsinghua water wall coal water slurry gasification. Major breakthroughs have been made in key technologies. For example, the core technologies such as direct coal liquefaction process and catalyst developed by Shenhua Group have been successfully applied to the demonstration project of millions of tons coal-to-oil production. The low-temperature Fischer-Tropsch synthetic oil technology independently developed by Yanzhou Mining Group has completed the demonstration project of 5 million tons coal-to-oil production in Yulin. The demonstration project has achieved significant results. Shenhua Baotou Coal to Olefin Project and Yitai Coal Indirect Liquefaction Project have been running steadily for many years, and have achieved good economic benefits.

Significant progress has been made in the construction of parks. At present, the major coal chemical bases with large scale are Ordos Coal Chemical Industry Base in Inner Mongolia, Ningxia Ningdong Energy Chemical Industry Base, Yuheng Coal Chemical Industry Base in Shaanxi Province and Zhundong and Yili Coal Chemical Industry Bases in Xinjiang. Today, in addition to coal-to-natural gas, China's technology level of coal-to-olefin, coal-to-oil, coal-to-aromatics and coal-to-ethylene glycol is at the forefront of the world, and China has reached the highest level in the field of modern coal chemical industry in the world.