New coal chemical becomes Inner Mongolia's green calling card

Industrial city revolution

Baotou is an important industrial city in Inner Mongolia and China. The city has showed strong momentum in new coal chemical construction.

At Baotou's Jiuyuan industrial development zone, the coal-to-olefin project of Shenghua Group, a giant State-owned coal-based integrated energy company, is turning raw coal into methane and then olefin. The magical process surprises visitors.

The project was approved by the National Development and Reform Commission on Dec 11, 2006, and was the only one of its kind during the 2006-2010 period. It went into operation in 2011. The project produced a total of 545,000 tons of polyolefin products in 2013 and realized 6 billion yuan in operation revenue. Products were mainly sold to North and East China.

The project is the world's first super-large coal-based methanol and olefin industrialization demonstration project. "We opened a new olefin and polyolefin production process based on coal, and the methanol-to-olefin core unit applied China's own technology," said Wu Xingbin, general manager of Shenhua Baotou's coal chemical branch.

The second-phase expansion project got Shenhua's approval and finished a design plan in 2013. It began a feasibility study report and bidding work this March, and construction started on May 16. The expansion project is expected to bring in 7 billion yuan in operation revenue and 1.6 billion yuan in profit every year. It will also add 2 million tons to coal-to-methanol capacity.

Baotou is now shaping up a clean coal chemical industrial cluster featuring the leading coal-to-olefin industry and diversified development.

National support for industrial layout

The autonomous region has determined to push forward 15 new coal chemical projects, involving 833.6 billion yuan in investment. A total of 92 billion cubic meters of natural gas will be produced based on coal every year, and 21.9 million tons of oil, methanol and byproducts will be made.

Huaxing's 4 billion cubic meters of coal gas projects in Ordos and Hulunbeir's 500,000-ton coal-to-olefin project have received approval from the National Development and Reform Commission. At the moment, the commission has approved five new coal chemical projects in Inner Mongolia, involving 214.4 billion yuan in total investment. The projects will form an annual capacity of 28 billion cubic meters of natural gas and 4 million tons of oil.