China to have world’s biggest coal-to-olefin plant next year

14 July 2009 05:07  [Source: ICIS news]

GUANGZHOU (ICIS News)--China’s state-owned Shenhua Ningxia Coal Industrial Group expects to bring on stream world’s biggest coal-to-olefin plant next year, a company source said on Tuesday.

“The methanol-to-propylene unit will start trial run in April and the gasification unit will be commissioned around three months later,” the source said.

The project would be able to yield 520,000 tonnes/year of polypropylene (PP) from coal, the biggest of its type in the world, the source added. It will also be able to produce 184,800 tonnes/year of gasoline, 40,000 tonnes/year of liquid fuel and 13,800 tonnes/year of sulphur.

Construction of the yuan (CNY) 17bn ($2.5bn) project, located in Ningdong, northwest China’s Ningxia province, had started in end 2005.

Chinese utilities company Datang International Power  also planned a 470,000 tonnes/year polypropylene unit in Inner Mongolia via the methanol-to-propylene route along with oil major Petrochina, which is gearing up for a $1.19bn plant also located in the Ningxia province due by the end of 2010. 

Shenhua Ningxia is a subsidiary of Shenhua Group, which is China's largest coal producer, and is in the midst of another coal-to-liquids plant feasibility study with South African energy giant Sasol.

($1=CNY6.83)

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