On September 9, 2019, Guanghui Energy Co., Ltd (hereafter referred to as Guanghui Energy) started  the Raw-Coke-Oven-Gas-to-Ethylene-Glycol production project with an output of 400,000 tons of ethylene glycol per year by comprehensively utilizing the raw coke oven gas. The raw coke oven gas (N2>50%,CO≈28%), by-product of 10 million tons of coal per year project  initiated by Xinjiang Guanghui Coal Cleaning and Refinery Company, the holding subsidiary of Guanghui Energy, is adopted as the raw material. In the project, coal is upgraded to improve quality for comprehensive utilization. A series of technologies such as conversion, absorption and separation are also applied to produce high-end chemical ethylene glycol.

The project's General Contractor China Wuhuan Engineering Co., Ltd. (hereafter referred to as Wuhuan Engineering) signed a cooperation agreement with Pioneer in which Pioneer designs and manufactures 45720Nm3/h PSA-CO plant to obtain carbon monoxide with a purity of more than 98.5%, all of which will be completely used for ethylene glycol production. Data shows that the PSA-CO plant is by far the largest pressure swing adsorption plant for CO purification in the world.

Raw coke oven gas’s components are complicated. In this project, N2’s content of the raw coke oven gas exceeds 50% and CO’s is about 28%. After the multisided market investigations by China Wuhuan Engineering and Guanghui Energy, it is learned that only Pioneer has industrialized application cases and profound experience in the condition of high N2 content in the feed syngas. With CO’s target-hitting purity as the premise, Pioneer guaranteed the yield rate to be more than 86%, thus completely satisfying the requirements for technical indexes in this project.  After Wuhuan Engineering fully acknowledged the advancement and feasibility of Pioneer’s CO separation technology, a decision was made to adopt the proprietary technology of Pioneer to provide reinforced guarantee for the stabilized supply of synthetic gas on the ethylene glycol production line. Both parties have entered into mutual cooperation.

The project is a path-breaking engineering for the comprehensive utilization of raw coke oven gas as the first Raw-Coke-Oven-Gas-to-Ethylene-Glycol project in China. After the first commencement, the plant will be able to reduce natural resource consumption, pollutant emission and the loss of coal resources, promoting the development of resource recycling, production clean and environmental landscaping.