«Forpost» found out how to meet the growing demand for methanol and to keep the trend of enhancing coal production in Russia
During the first quarter of 2018 105 thousand tons of coal were mined in Russia. This is by 5,5% more than it was produced over the same period in 2017 and a quarter less than 5 years ago. Export of coal is also on the increase and this suggests that “the dirtiest power resource” is in demand by both the metallurgy and energy industry.
In our country coal provides for only 15 % of power generation whereas the global average value is approximately twice as much. In the USA and Germany it is over 40%, in China it amounts to 70%. Over the last years coal consumption in India has been advancing with gigantic strides, which has made it possible to meet the increased energy demand.
All of these things happen against the background of leading world economies’ plans to shift to sustainable and environmentally safe power generation. These intentions are summed up in Paris agreement on climate signed in 2015. In this document power sources are divided into “clean” and “dirty” and it is stated that the latter must be forced out from the global energy mix.
Without doubt, coal has been acknowledged to be “the dirtiest” as the greatest amount of CO2 and other pollutants are emitted into the atmosphere as the result of its combustion. Does this mean that the rising trend of coal consumption will change and the revenues of Russian coal companies will begin to decline?
“For me it is evident that the volumes of coal consumption in the world will not decrease. This is related to the growth of global population and the necessity to provide mankind with primary resources in the conditions of energy poverty. In the developed countries demand for this resource will gradually decrease whereas in developing economies it will grow. As the result by 2040 the annual growth will be about 0,6 % though the share of coal in the global energy mix will slightly go down,” says the Deputy Minister in Energy Anatoliy Yanovskiy.
Experts say that in future coal production will grow not only due to the increase in the demand for this resource in metallurgy and power industry but also with respect to the development of chemical industry. Last year scientists from Russia and Germany carried out research and as part of study they evaluated the cost of production of some products from coal produced by coal-to-gas conversion.The end product of this conversion is ecologically safe syn-gas.
“We carried out the analysis of full technological chains of deep coal processing, which is produced in mine “Taldinskaya-Zapadnaya-2” (low ash coal-editor) and mine “Komsomolets” (high ash coal) in Kuzbas. The most efficient was a new technology COORVED, which made it possible to implement the concept of multizone generator in which the advantages of the currently used plants are comnbined.Among these advantages are: optimized heat recovery,inherent for moving bed gasifiers,low level specific demand in oxygen typical for fluidized-bed gas producers as well as high quality of syn-gas. Now it is furnished by in-flow gasgenerators,says the rector of Saint-Petersburg Mining university Vladimir Litvinenko.
He wrote a book “Syn-gas production: current status and potential for implementation into Russian industry” coauthored with the professor from Freiberg mining academy Bernd Meyer (FRG).The authors give the estimation of marketability of a number of products derived due to the inmplementation of advanced gasification techniques. According to the researchers the most cost-effective is the production of methanol.
It is used, first of all, for the production of formaldehyde and solvents. In addition, in some countries methanol is used as liquid fuel additive for the internal combustion engines.Over the last years global demand for this monobasic alcohol is growing sustainably.Thus in 2016 it was 76 million tons, and in 2017 it amounted to 83 million tons. According to the forecasts by 2021 the demand will come up to 117 million tons, 80 million of them will be consumed by China.
The Russian market demand is fully satisfied by domestic production. Russia does not import it and export constitutes about one third of the produce. Domestic as well as global consumption is constantly increasing which has an effect on the profits of core businesses. For example, according to the results of 2017 “Metafrax”, which produces one quarter of methanol in our country, earned a profit over 19 billion rubles. This is 9% more than in 2016 and 45 % more than three years ago.
“2017 was a successful year for our company. A significant amount of preparatory work was done for the construction of “Ammonia-carbamide-melamine” complex. The second stage of methanol production modernization is completed. Over the whole history of the plant its production has reached the record figure-1 million 107 thousand tons”, said the “ Metrafax’ Director General Vladimir Daut.
Methanol price is also growing. After a drop below 250 euros per ton in 2016 it went up again and by April 2018 it reached 380 euros.This tendency was not a surprise for the experts who claimed that constantly growing demand on the background of inadequate investments in productive capacities would lead particularly to such a development.
“ The data shows that production of methanol from Russian coal on the basis of the state-of-the-art gasification technologies may be quite competitive. This is proved by our calculations of production chains. Thus, the primary cost of methanol produced from low-ash coal on the basis of COORVED technology is 256 euro per ton and from high-ash coal the cost is 279 euros,” underlined the German professor Bernd Meyer.
The creation of technological chains of added value in Russia, where coal companies will serve as the first stage of the chain, will facilitate additional workplaces and budget replenishment of various levels. This is especially timely taking into account that our country possesses the second in the world coal reserves (157 billion tons). Alternately to oil and gas ,this will be enough for another 500 years.
Nowadays the availability of a large amount of efficient value chains determines the competitiveness and the level of economic development of the states. In this regard the increase of coal deep processing output may well be a part of the strategic framework aimed at enhancing energy security of Russia and domestic industry performance.
