Syngas to ethylene glycol technical barriers urgently need to be broken through

Syngas to ethylene glycol: Compared with petroleum legal system, it has resource and cost advantages

Ethylene glycol is one of the important raw materials for the production of polyester. For every ton of polyester product produced, 0.33 tons of ethylene glycol is consumed. Like another upstream PX of polyester, ethylene glycol also faces the problem of high external dependence and being restricted by others.

Synthetic gas to ethylene glycol, commonly known as "coal to ethylene glycol", means that coal is used instead of petroleum ethylene to produce ethylene glycol, so this production process is mainly relative to petroleum legal system ethylene glycol. In 2013, my country's ethylene glycol production capacity was mainly distributed in enterprises such as Sinopec [microblogging], Henan Coal Industry, Funde Energy, PetroChina and CNOOC, and the petroleum method accounted for the main proportion of the main production process.

Compared with petroleum-based ethylene glycol, syngas-based ethylene glycol has obvious resource and cost advantages. According to Gao Lei, if calculated based on the coal price of 400 yuan/ton, the cost of synthesis gas to ethylene glycol is about 5,000 yuan/ton, while the cost of naphtha route is 7,000 yuan/ton.

Outlook for the future production of ethylene glycol from syngas: the production will reach 2 million tons in 2015

Gao Lei believes that China's demand for ethylene glycol is increasing year by year with the growth of GDP. According to the characteristics of China's energy structure, the next few years will be the gold that will vigorously develop coal-based ethylene glycol and reduce import dependence (1238.00, 1.30, 0.11%) period.

According to him, since 2009, a total of 7 syngas-to-ethylene glycol projects have been put into operation in China, with a total production capacity of 1.05 million tons, including Liaotong Jinmei 20, a subsidiary of Danhua Technology (600844.SH). 10,000-ton plant, Hualu Hengsheng (600426.SH) 50,000-ton plant; 12 projects under construction with a total capacity of 2.75 million tons. According to the plan and construction speed, these projects are expected to be basically put into operation in 2017.

He also predicts that in 2015, China's demand for ethylene glycol will reach about 15 million tons, and the production of ethylene glycol from syngas will reach 2 million tons, accounting for about 33% of China's total ethylene glycol output. The import volume remained at nearly 9 million tons, and the contradiction between supply and demand was difficult to resolve.

By 2020, China's ethylene glycol production capacity will reach 27 million tons, and the output is expected to reach 23 million tons. According to polyester forecasts, my country's ethylene glycol demand is expected to be 23.07 million tons, and the output and demand are basically the same.

Syngas to ethylene glycol faces problems: technical obstacles still exist

Although the ethylene glycol market has huge potential and strong demand, and the domestic syngas-to-ethylene glycol technology has developed rapidly in recent years, Gao Lei believes that even so, the problem of technical obstacles still exists, which is also Seriously affected the development and product application of the entire domestic synthesis gas to ethylene glycol industry.

According to him, judging from the quality of domestic synthetic gas-to-ethylene glycol products, some products have reached the national standard for high-grade products, but some products have not yet reached the standard. There is a large gap in product quality. The stability is also poor, with good times and bad times; in addition, in practice, due to different processes and sources, even the synthetic gas-based ethylene glycol products that meet the standards of superior products may not be able to produce qualified polyester products.

Gao Lei said that in recent years, the polyester industry as a whole has been sluggish, so polyester companies hope to control costs through various methods. Ethylene glycol produced from syngas is cheaper than petroleum-based ethylene glycol, which can reduce the production of polyester products However, due to insufficient production and limited room for price cuts, and considering the risk of use, polyester plants usually can only use petroleum-based products and synthetic gas-based products.

"In general, the large-scale use of syngas to ethylene glycol is not enough momentum for polyester plants," he said.

In addition, for the cheap ethane-to-ethylene glycol in the Middle East and North America, Gao Lei believes that this will have an impact on my country's ethylene glycol market, but the impact will not be as great as imagined.

He said, first of all, from a global perspective, the proportion of ethane as a raw material has not increased significantly. Based on the continuous increase in the production of ethylene from ethane, it is expected that the production capacity of ethylene glycol from ethane will not increase on a large scale in the future; Secondly, shale gas in North America can drive the increase of ethane production, but the ethane content of shale gas is low, so the impact is not significant from the perspective of production calculation, and currently North American ethane is mainly used to produce polyethylene; moreover, Although the price of shale gas in the United States is cheap, the distance between the gas field and the petrochemical center is long, and the construction of public pipelines requires high investment, which restricts the development of shale gas chemical industry.