Dmto and Beyond: Dicp's Sustainable Innovations in Technologies for on-Purpose Production of Light Olefins from Methanol

The rapid development in past thirty years has triggered a significant increase of the light olefins (including ethylene, propylene, and butylenes) production capacity in China, and it is expected the demand will continue to expand in the coming years. In view of China's tremendous coal reserves, the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP) developed a fluidized bed methanol-to-olefins technology (DMTO). The DMTO technology was successfully commercialized in 2010 in Shenhua Baotou's coal-to-olefins (CTO) plant (with an ethylene and propylene production capacity of 600 kt/a). So far seven commercial units using DMTO technology have been put into stream in China. As part of the DICP's ambition of sustainable innovations for on-purpose production of light olefins from methanol, a dual functional catalyst was developed for converting methanol to light olefins and cracking C4+ to ethylene and propylene simultaneously. By use of this catalyst, a second generation MTO technology (DMTO-II) has been developed and successfully implemented into a recent started up CTO plant with an ethylene and propylene production capacity of 670 kt/a. This presentation will introduce the research and development (R&D) activities at DICP on DMTO and DMTO-II technologies, which covers the zeolite and catalyst synthesis, process development, reactor scale-up, and commercial operations. Beyond that, DICP's strategy of innovative catalyst and process research for on-purpose production of light olefins from methanol will also be highlighted.