Lutianhua Group to Build World’s Largest DME Plant in China
28 December 2006
Chinese petrochemical company Lutianhua Group Inc. is planning to build a plant capable of producing 1 million tonnes of dimethyl ether (DME) per year in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. The plant would be the world’s largest DME facility to date.
Lutianhua Group has already signed a technology licensing agreement with Japan’s Toyo Engineering, and has applied to the Chinese government for permission for the plant. Toyo expects to obtain the plant order soon, according to a report in the Nihon Keizai Shimbun.
The partners, Lutianhua and Toyo, expect to receive permission during the first half of 2007. Toyo will oversee the design of the DME plant and supply the catalyst used in DME production.
Construction of the plant will cost an estimated ¥80-100 billion (US$673-841 million). Lutianhua hopes to have the plant up and running in 2010. The plan is to pipe the DME to large cities like Beijing for use as a fuel. A number of projects in China are exploring the use of DME for power generation and as a diesel fuel substitute.
In September, Shanxi Lanhua Clean Energy Co. awarded Toyo a contract for the licensing, process design, and supply of catalysts and technological services for a 153,000 tonnes/year coal-based dimethyl ether (DME) production facility.
In 2003, Toyo constructed a 10,000 ton/year DME plant in Sichuan Province in China for Lutianhua, which was the first in the world to produce DME commercially for fuel use. Thereafter, TOYO was awarded a 110,000 ton/year DME plant (put into operation in March 2006) also located in Sichuan Province as the second unit, and a 210,000 ton/year unit (to be completed in 2007) located in Ningxia in northwestern China as the third DME plant.
Toyo has modelled out a Jumbo DME plant capable of producing 2.4 million tonnes of DME per year.
Resources:
Fuel DME Plant in East Asia (Toyo paper given at 15th Saudi-Japan Joint Symposium, 2005)
that can't possibly be good... can it? If the energy is coming from coal, why not just use plain coal, it wouldn't change the amount of pollution in the long run would it?
Posted by: Brad | 28 December 2006 at 11:56 AM
If the energy is coming from coal, why not just use plain coal
You can use plain coal in diesel engines? :)
Also, for 'power generation' probably means in combustion turbines, which also would get unhappy if you fed coal into them.
Posted by: Paul Dietz | 28 December 2006 at 12:25 PM
Oh, well then yes, i guess htat makes a little more sense, cars are never too happy when you put coal in them. Once it's turned into the DME is it environmentally friendly at least? or does it still retain the same bad characteristics of coal.
Posted by: Brad | 28 December 2006 at 01:32 PM
DME is clean. Getting it from coal to DME is not, very CO2 intensive (that's why DME is clean). However, when paired with CO2 sequestering or better yet algea ponds the entire process would be much better than oil. This is something th US should be doing and would if it wasn't so expensive.
Posted by: joseph | 28 December 2006 at 02:50 PM
I don't think it would be 'much better than oil' even if you sequester the CO2 from the production process, it would bring it closer to oil in terms of well to wheels, but the main CO2 source (everyone's tailpipes) remains the same problem as before. I do like the idea of cleaning up the exhaust emissions of heavy duty vehicles, and DME is one option, so in that respect it seems like a good plan, as well as reducing dependence on imported oil.
Posted by: Erick | 01 January 2007 at 11:00 PM