Coal to Liquid (CTL): Commercialization Prospects in China

Abstract

Production of fuels/chemicals from syngas (CO + H 2 ) is receiving increased attention with the background of the resource depletion and the unstable prices of petroleum oil. The fuels, especially diesel, obtained from the syngas conversion via Fischer-Tropsch synthesis (FTS), are proved to be of very high quality that will contribute much to environmental protection and raising the energy efficiency in the transportation sector when modern diesel engines are massively applied in vehicles. FTS technologies developed in recent years have reached the stage for the feasibility of construction of large-scale complexes. Under a long-term consideration of developing the field of coal to liquids (CTL), major issues in successfully applying CTL technologies are those controlling the feasibility of all kinds of projects. Points identified are, in general: (1) efficiency advantage over conventional processes (e.g. thermal power generation process); (2) cost and economic benefit; (3) environment advantage. These questions have been better answered using CTL-based poly-generation schemes. Among all the different schemes, in principle, the co-production of liquid fuels and electricity are naturally the main frame. The simple efficiency increase due to the better energy balance in the co-production mode and the environment protection advantage due to the easy-to-apply technology in the pollutant removal and treatment from syngas in a liquid fuel process has projected a bright future even for applying the more capital intensive IGCC + F-T scheme, which can raise the efficiency (to end products) from 43-46 % in either single schemes to about 52-60 %. This new process will guarantee a better solution to environment protection.

Diesel from Syngas

“…Currently, two demonstration CTL plants, each with a capacity of 160 000 tons per year (ca. 3500 bbl d À1 ), will be commissioned between 2008 and 2009 [33]. The experience gained from these demonstration projects, especially in the field of process engineering, will be expected to pave the way to further scale-up to a truly commercial-scale plant.…”

“…Notably, recent progress in the high-temperature (260-290 C) slurry F-T synthesis developed at Synfuels China has pushed productivity to even higher levels. Today, at least double productivity may be achieved due not only to the use of highly efficient F-T synthesis catalyst formulations but also to improved slurry reactor systems [33].…”

“…In addition to its earlier fixed-bed reactor process (MFT), Synfuels China Ltd, a company evolved from ICC, has carried out systematic proprietary catalyst development, reactor scale-up, and process integration at the pilot plant and demonstration scales [25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33]. Notably, the high-temperature slurry-bed F-T process (HTSFTP Ò ) originates from this research.…”

“…Notably, the high-temperature slurry-bed F-T process (HTSFTP Ò ) originates from this research. The catalyst used in this latter process is a proprietary iron high-temperature catalyst (named as SynFT-I) which was recently tailored for the high-temperature slurry-bed reactor [33]. The composition and the preparation issues of the latest catalyst remain confidential.…”

China goes green: cleaner production of chemicals

“…As a successful example to substitute oil with coal, the conversion route of coal-syngas-methanol-olefi ns has been commercialized in China [4,5] . In the meantime, several industrial projects are being demonstrated or are in pilot-plant test, involving coal to liquid fuels [6] , coal to SNG [7] , coal to glycol [8,9] , and coal to aromatics [10] . In this review, we exceptionally focus our attention on a not as yet outstanding, but potentially important process of coal to acetylene, since it is closely related to the chlor-alkali industry in China.…”