Serious homogenization, product price decline, diversified transformation

"Coal to oil doesn't make money, coal doesn't have consumption tax, but it needs to pay consumption tax of refined oil after it is made into refined oil." Wang Jianguo, former director of Shanxi Institute of coal chemical industry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, said at the 2019 Western China high end coal chemical industry forum recently. The refined oil consumption tax refers to the consumption tax paid by consumers when they consume seven kinds of refined oil, such as gasoline, diesel oil, Naphtha, solvent oil, aviation kerosene, lubricating oil and fuel oil. The raw material of coal to oil is coal, and the product produced is refined oil. At present, the downturn of international oil price has led to the decrease of domestic refined oil price, which has greatly reduced the profit space of coal to oil enterprises. The recovery of coal price has made coal to oil enterprises unable to effectively control the cost. Many industry insiders said that in view of China's existing energy endowment and development status, we should explore a variety of ways to use coal resources, accelerate the transformation of coal chemical industry, give full play to the value of coal resources, and ensure energy supply through multiple channels. The basic situation of China's energy structure is lack of oil, gas and coal. According to Wu Qiang, academician of Chinese Academy of engineering and professor of China University of mining and technology, China's GDP ranks second in the world at present, and its future development needs a large amount of energy supply as guarantee. And coal is very important to ensure national energy security and stable supply.

At present, China is actively promoting the adjustment of energy structure and industrial transformation and upgrading. Coal is the most important primary energy in China, accounting for more than half of the total primary energy consumption in China. The coal revolution is inevitable, and the development direction from single fuel to both fuel and raw materials has become the mainstream. It is understood that the cost of coal to oil is relatively low, and its technical characteristics determine that the impurities are less and the quality of oil products is higher than the refined oil produced by crude oil refining. However, in the past few years, there is a view in the industry that coal to oil has no advantage in terms of environmental protection of pollution emissions or economic aspects such as resource consumption, and its more significance is to ensure energy security. According to Bai Yi, vice president of the petroleum and Chemical Industry Planning Institute, coal based energy and chemical products have made great progress during the 13th Five Year Plan period, and China's new coal chemical integrated technology is in the leading position in the world. But in the field of chemical industry, petrochemical industry is still in the leading position in the next ten years at least, and coal chemical industry is still a supporting role. At present, the coal chemical industry is facing many problems, such as the rise of coal price, the serious homogenization of products, the decline of product price, and the lack of competitiveness of coal to oil compared with petroleum refining. The best way to change the status quo is to upgrade the coal-based new energy industry. According to Bai Yi, methanol from marine coal will be a direction of future development. Because methanol is quite competitive as a marine fuel.

"As far as the emission reduction effect is concerned, methanol engine is similar to LNG engine. For ships carrying methanol, it is both cargo and fuel. In addition, even if methanol leaks and other problems, it can also achieve biodegradation, especially in the water can be quickly diluted to "non-toxic level", which has little negative impact on the environment and marine organisms. " It is worth noting that in China's methanol industry, the proportion of coal to methanol is about 64%, that of natural gas and coke oven gas to methanol is about 18%, and that of synthetic ammonia is about 18%. Since coal is the main energy source in China, coal to methanol will play an important role in the future alternative energy sources. The year 2018 is defined as the first year of Hydrogen energy by many people. With the development of hydrogen energy industry in China, the concept of coal to hydrogen is gradually known by people. Hydrogen energy is a kind of clean secondary energy, which has the advantages of high energy density, high combustion heat value, wide source, storable, renewable, zero emission, etc. it can effectively solve the energy crisis and environmental pollution problems. Fu Guanyun, a researcher at the Energy Research Institute of the national development and Reform Commission, said that China has a large number of coal resources and a large number of industrial byproducts hydrogen will be produced during coking, which creates good conditions for the development of hydrogen energy industry.

The economy and energy in the central and western regions need to be developed. As a deep and carbon reducing industrial raw material, hydrogen energy has the characteristics of sustainable development and ushers in opportunities in the western region of China. In addition, using coal as raw material to produce humic acid is also considered as one of the effective ways of coal resource utilization. Humic acid is the remains of animals and plants, mainly the remains of plants. It is a kind of organic matter generated and accumulated through a series of processes of microbial decomposition and transformation, as well as geochemistry. Niu Yuhua, a professor at Shaanxi University of science and technology, said that in China's modern coal chemical industry, the use of low-grade coal is not sufficient, and humic acid is abundant in low calorific value coal, such as peat, lignite and weathered coal, among which the humic acid content of weathered coal can reach up to 80%. According to Niu Yuhua, humic acid has considerable economic, social and ecological benefits, which can effectively improve the value of coal utilization. Humic acid, as an organic material, can be widely used in agriculture, environmental protection, industry, medicine, food and other fields. The development and utilization of humic acid can expand the coal industry chain and promote the upgrading of coal industry. In recent years, coal to liquid has fallen into a downturn due to the decline of oil price, the rise of coal price, and the failure of tax policies, but it is only a part of many subdivisions of coal chemical industry in China. The shortage of oil and natural gas resources in China forces the continuous development and progress of coal chemical industry to some extent, and the modern coal chemical industry will not stagnate because of one of them. The insiders pointed out that the revolution in the field of coal lies in promoting the clean, efficient and sustainable development and utilization of coal in the whole industry and the whole industrial chain as a whole. We must explore and strengthen the clean utilization of coal, take a diversified development path, and provide safer and cleaner energy for economic development.