26-09-2013

Wison Engineering commercializes proprietary methanol-to-olefins technology

Wison Engineering Services Co. Ltd, the largest private sector chemical engineering, procurement and construction management service provider in China, today announced the successful initial start-up of its designed methanol-to-olefins (MTO) plant featuring the Company's proprietary technology. The plant, designed by Wison Engineering Ltd., an indirect non-wholly owned subsidiary of the Group, is located in the Nanjing Chemical Industry Park. It has successfully produced qualified ethylene and propylene products which meet the requirements set for polymer products, with a passing rate of 99.98% and 99.8% for ethylene and propylene products respectively, marking the first commercialization of Wison Engineering's olefin separation technology for MTO plants, and also demonstrating yet another successful commercialization case of China's coal-to-olefins technology, which will facilitates the coal-to-chemical industry development roadmap in China.

With planned annual production of 300kta of ethylene/ propylene, the MTO plant is one of the production units of Wison (Nanjing) Clean Energy Co., Ltd. ("Wison Clean Energy"). Following the commissioning of the first Shenhua Baotou coal-to-olefin project, the MTO plant marks a new successful initial start-up which not only employs Wison Engineering's MTO technology, but is also the first MTO plant in the world to apply advanced Honeywell UOP industrial MTO technology.

The Wison Engineering olefin separation technology featured in the MTO project utilizes the Company's proprietary "pre-cutting + oil absorption" technology, which reduces energy consumption and lowers investment costs while also improving the olefin recovery rate, allowing for more stable production and bringing longer operating cycles. This technology broke the bottleneck in the technological difficulties that existed in the domestic industry; hence, the China National Petroleum & Chemical Planning Institute selected it to be the recommended technology for the "Twelve-Five Coal-to-Olefins Upgrade Demonstration Project", making it one of Wison Engineering's core technologies. The close cooperation between Wison Engineering and UOP on the technological front has pushed forward the development of domestic MTO technology and the upgrading of the modern coal-to-chemicals industry. Since its development in 2007, Wison Engineering's separation technology in MTO plant has obtained four domestic invention patents and one invention patent in Indonesia. The technology has been adopted by enterprises such as Shandong Yangmei Hengtong Chemicals, Shenhua Xinjiang New Materials (神華新疆新材料),Jiangsu Sailboat Petrochemical and Pucheng Clean Energy.

In addition to providing proprietary technology and process package design, the Company has also been commissioned to undertake the basic design, overall design and detailed engineering services of this MTO project as well as its ancillary and utility facilities, and had been involved throughout the entire project construction phase. As the project represents the integrated application of Wison Engineering's solefin separation technology and UOP's Menthol-to-Olefin (MTO) technology for the first time, it fully showcases the Company's design and engineering capabilities. Capitalizing on Wison Engineering's strong R&D and engineering team and its proven track record, the Company successfully completed the entire design and engineering work in just one year, at least six months faster than its peers in respect of average design cycle. This has significantly shortened time for the whole project commencement. Until now, Wison Engineering has been well-equipped with capabilities to provide full cycle services for different sizes of MTO plants, including300kta, 600kta and 900kta MTO units.

"In line with China's alternative energy strategy, Wison Engineering considers the coal-to-chemicals sector its strategic focus to achieve its business diversification. Meanwhile, Wison Engineering has always put extensive efforts into technological innovation while continuously enhancing its engineering to promote its business development, driven by its advances in innovative technology," said Mr. Liu Haijun, Senior Vice President and Executive Director of Wison Engineering. "As one of the few engineering companies in China to provide their customers with integrated services spanning the entire project life cycle, from process package design to start-up, we look forward to contributing our strengths to boosting the technological development and upgrading of modern coal-to-chemicals industry."