“Coal to ethylene glycol” is to use ethylene instead of ethylene to produce ethylene glycol. Coal-based ethylene glycol, once one of the “leaders” of the new coal chemical industry, is now experiencing unprecedented difficulties. On the one hand, oil prices continued to decline, and the cost advantage of coal-to-ethylene glycol to ethylene glycol almost disappeared. On the other hand, the public’s dispute over coal chemical industry caused by the haze problem became increasingly fierce, resulting in a A series of related industrial policies have tightened. Even worse, after several years, the coal-to-ethylene glycol demonstration plant was unable to successfully meet production standards. All kinds of unpredictable signs can not help the industry begin to use a skeptical eye to re-examine the darling of this new type of coal chemical industry.

The price advantage of oil price plummeted weakened “At present, crude oil prices have fallen to below US$60/bbl, and the cost advantage of coal-to-ethylene glycol over ethylene-ethylene glycol has been reversed. Ethylene has achieved price competitive advantage. In the international market, B The price of diols has also hit new lows. From the average price of 7,300 yuan/ton in the first half of last year, the price dropped to about 5,000 yuan/ton, which is a drop of more than 30%, and the new price level has been refreshed for six years. The coal-to-ethylene glycol industry is on the verge of loss."

At present, there are two main technical routes for the production of ethylene glycol in the world: one is the traditional crude oil—naphtha—ethylene glycol. If the crude oil price is less than US$60/barrel, the production cost is About 4,000 yuan/ton, the other is China's original coal-based glycol, and the technology deployment of this technology device is mainly based on the technology developed by the Institute of Material Structure of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Jiangsu Danhua Technology Group. The cost of the process is around 4,500 yuan/ton. While the global economy has not yet emerged from the gloom of the recession and the price of crude oil has continued to decline, the ethylene process has created a significant living space for the coal-to-ethylene glycol project that is currently booming in China. Since last year, it has become a common practice that many coal-to-ethylene glycol plants have been put into production for maintenance or postponed construction.

According to the comprehensive cost estimation, coal-based ethylene glycol can only have a competitive advantage with the ethylene process when the price of crude oil is above 80 US dollars per barrel. Although domestic coal-to-ethylene glycol projects mostly use lower-priced lignite as raw materials, and the project owners are mostly large-scale coal companies in transition, coal-to-ethylene glycol plants have a large initial investment, and the technology is not fully mature and cannot be full. Load operation, equipment depreciation costs, weakened its cost advantage. If market participants predict that the price of oil will fall within the range of US$70-$80/barrel in the past two years, and coal prices have stabilized, the future of domestic coal-to-ethylene glycol projects will suffer major setbacks.

It is understood that in the industry while singing a wave of coal-based ethylene glycol sound wave after wave of waves, while many still optimistic about the prospects for the development of industry insiders are optimistic. What will happen to coal tomorrow? In a variety of doubts, breaking the technological bottleneck as soon as possible is the only consensus reached by the industry.