Shanxi Jincheng Anthracite Mining Group Co. Ltd. subsidiary Hubei Sanning Chemical Industry Co. Ltd. has let a contract to Honeywell UOP LLC to provide licensing for its proprietary Polybed pressure-swing adsorption (PSA) technology to supply high-quality hydrogen at Hubei Sanning’s monoethylene glycol (MEG) plant near the Yangtze River at Zhijiang, in China’s Hubei Province.
The PSA unit will generate 165,000 cu m/hr of hydrogen, which will be used to produce MEG manufactured from coal, Honeywell UOP said.
The PSA technology—which features new Honeywell UOP adsorbents to recover hydrogen at very high levels and can generate hydrogen with purities as high as 99.9999%—will enable Hubei Sanning to meet new environmental regulations in the region.
The unit also comes as part of Hubei Sanning’s plant to modernize its production technology to high-pressure gasification as well as accommodate a new 600,000-tonne/year MEG plant scheduled for startup in 2019, the service provider said.
A value of the contract was not disclosed.
Coal has become an increasingly attractive alternative to oil as a petrochemical feedstock in China, which has coal reserves of nearly 300 billion tonnes but still imports more than 8 million b/d of oil, about a tenth of which is converted into petrochemicals, Honeywell UOP said.
Coal is gasified with water to produce synthesis gas, which is a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen. Each of these components are then purified and used in different stages to produce MEG.
Contact Robert Brelsford at [email protected].
