Article Source: China News Network (Chinanews.com) , science and technology daily [ results broadcast ] science and Technology Daily News (reporter Lu Chengkuan) January 9, the reporter learned that, the world’s largest ethanol production facility has just started trial production in Huaibei, Anhui Province. The unit can produce 600,000 tons of anhydrous ethanol every year, opening a new route for clean and efficient use of coal. It is understood that the plant was built by Huaibei mining group Carbon Xin Technology Co. , Ltd. . The technology was jointly developed by the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (hereinafter referred to as Dalian Institute of Chemical Sciences) and Yanchang Petroleum Group. The main raw material of methanol comes from coke oven gas.

Ethanol is recognized as an excellent gasoline additive in the world, and it is also an important basic chemical. It can be used as a chemical feedstock in part instead of ethylene, or it can be easily converted to ethylene. The large-scale production of non-grain ethanol is of great significance to China's food security, energy security and supply chain security of chemical industry chain. At present, the world's annual output of ethanol about 100 million tons, mainly by the United States, Brazil and other countries using grain or sugar cane and other crop raw materials, mostly used as fuel ethanol. Our country ethanol market demand is big, the production capacity is insufficient seriously. In 2022, fuel ethanol produced by old grain fermentation route in our country is about 2.7 million tons, but the gap still reaches 10 million tons. Because the traditional ethanol production involves the problem of competing with people for grain, it is of strategic significance for our country to open up the non-grain ethanol production route.

Since 2010, the academician Liu Zhongmin team of Dalian Institute of Chemical Sciences has continued to work hard on the non-grain ethanol production track, a new environmentally friendly route for the synthesis of anhydrous ethanol (DMTE) from syngas via dimethyl ether carbonylation and methyl acetate hydrogenation was proposed. The R & D team cooperated with Yanchang Petroleum Group company to develop non-noble metal catalyst and DMTE process technology, and realized the large-scale production of ethanol from coal, natural gas or steel plant gas. The start-up of the 600,000-ton-a-year ethanol production plant of carbon-xin company, a Huaibei mining group, has verified the advanced and reliable DMTE technology and promoted its large-scale application. Up to now, DMTE technology has signed 13 sets of industrial units (including 2 sets of export) technology implementation license contracts, ethanol production capacity of 3.95 million tons per year. Editor: Liu Yanghe