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CTO capacities strongly expanding in Western region of China, exceeded 8Mt/a in 2017

2017-10-25

As of the end of Sep. 2017, China has built 21 sets of coal (methanol) to olefins plant, a total capacity of 120.9 Mt/a (excluded the mothballed MTP projects in Shandong). Among them, 8.18 Mt/a capacity of olefins concentrated in the western region of China.

 

ASIACHEM selected 4 typical CTO projects in western China, namely Shenhua Baotou, Inner Mongolia ChinaCoal Mengda, Shenhua Yulin, and ChinaCoal Yulin, operation overview of these projects, raw material supply and price, product sales, logistics and inventory, cost and profit, the future expansion are studied.

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In general, the 4 CTO projects in the western region have entered the stable operations with operating loads of up to 100-110% (excluding maintenance periods); stable supply of raw materials, mainly from group-affiliated companies or surroundings coal producers; raw material price fluctuations have the greatest impact on projects profitability, coal cost accounted for 35% of CTO projects costs, methanol cost accounted for 75% of MTO costs. In H1 2017, the overall profitability of the CTO projects was better than MTO. CTO companies were actively preparing for the second phase project expansion, while the MTO companies focused on planning the new methanol projects to ensure the stability of feedstock prices and supply.

 

According to ASIACHEM’s data, there are currently nearly 30 of CTO/MTO projects under construction or planning, of which 15 projects are located in the western region and most of them are coal-to-olefins integration projects. The fastest progress of the preparatory work include: Qinghai Mining, Shenhua Baotou II, and Sinopec Great Wall Guizhou project.

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Sinopec Great Wall Energy & Chemical (Guizhou) Co., Ltd. is conducting a 600 Kt/a Coal based polyolefin project in Bijie, Guizhou province, with local anthracite as raw material, using pulverized coal gasification technology and S-MTO technology to produce olefins, to build a new 1.8 Mt/a methanol project, MTO project with 1.8Mt/a methanol feeding, 300 Kt/a LLDPE and 300 Kt/a PP projects. The total investment of the project is 16.77 billion RMB. In June 2015, NDRC’s approved the project as the one of the national 9 olefins demonstration projects. In Feb. 2017,  it was officially approved by the Ministry of Environmental Protection for EIA report.

 

9th China Coal to Olefins Conference 2017 will be organized by ASIACHEM on Nov. 22-23 in Guiyang, Guizhou. The upcoming event will discuss CTO capacity expanding and trends 2017-2021; focusing on West China new CTO projects; Asia & China’s polyolefins market new pattern; CTO plants operation & technological advances; typical CTO projects economics analysis; air separation, gasification, syngas purification technologies update; methanol, MTO & polyolefins catalysts & technological progress; as well as environmental issues.