Coal to liquid (CTL): Commercialization prospects in china

Production of fuels/chemicals from syngas (CO + H-2) is receiving increased attention with the background of the resource depletion and the unstable prices of petroleum oil. The fuels, especially diesel, obtained from the syngas conversion via Fischer-Tropsch synthesis (FTS), are proved to be of very high quality that will contribute much to environmental protection and raising the energy efficiency in the transportation sector when modern diesel engines are massively applied in vehicles. FTS technologies developed in recent years have reached the stage for the feasibility of construction of large-scale complexes. Under a long-term consideration of developing the field of coal to liquids (M), major issues in successfully applying CTL technologies are those controlling the feasibility of all kinds of projects. Points identified are, in general: (1) efficiency advantage over conventional processes (e.g. thermal power generation process); (2) cost and economic benefit; (3) environment advantage. These questions have been better answered using CTL-based poly-generation schemes. Among all the different schemes, in principle, the co-production of liquid fuels and electricity are naturally the main frame. The simple efficiency increase due to the better energy balance in the co-production mode and the environment protection advantage due to the easy-to-apply technology in the pollutant removal and treatment from syngas in a liquid fuel process has projected a bright future even for applying the more capital intensive IGCC + F-T scheme, which can raise the efficiency (to end products) from 4346 % in either single schemes to about 52-60 %. This new process will guarantee a better solution to environment protection.