Ultra-clean fuels from coal liquefaction: China about to launch big projects

Diesel Fuel News, July 22, 2002 by Jack Peckham

Since liquefaction yields a distillate of only around 45 cetane, Shenhua is mulling plans to build a small, adjacent coal gasification/FT plant to enable high-cetane, ultra-low sulfur diesel FT diesel for blending with low-cetane liquefaction distillate. Both processes produce ultra-low sulfur fuels, as will be required for cleaning-up combustion in China's polluted big cities.

Prior to choosing the HTI technology, Shenhua also evaluated direct-liquefaction technologies from Germany's RAG and Veba Oel groups (see Diesel Fuel News 6/18/97, p1), which were first proposed for a lignite-to-fuels project in Yunnan Province, Lee said. The RAG technology would require relatively higher reactor pressures compared to HTI's technology, he said.

Separately, Shenhua evaluated a Japanese government-developed "NEDOL" liquefaction technology, which like HTI would employ relatively lower pressures than the RAG technology, he said. In the end, the HTI technology was found to be superior on product yield and lower cost.