On September 27, the signing ceremony of the carbon dioxide-made green methanol project between Sierbang Petrochemical and Iceland Carbon Cycle International Company was held in Beijing. This marks the official launch of the world's first industrial chain project of "carbon dioxide capture and utilization - green methanol - new energy materials" jointly built by China and Iceland in the spirit of the central government's important goal of "carbon peaking and carbon neutrality".
Jin Zhijian, Chinese Ambassador to Iceland; and Gudlaugur Thór Thórdarson, Iceland’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and the International Development Cooperation; were joined by the Minister of Tourism, Industry and Innovation, as well as the Minister of Environment and Natural Resources; together with ?lafur Ragnar Grímsson, former President of Iceland; and the CEO of Icelandic Carbon Cycle International; as well as others, who participated in the event through video connection.
Thórir Ibsen, Ambassador of Iceland to China; Wei Anli, Secretary-General of the Methanol Automobile Promotion Expert Committee of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology; Bai Yi, Vice President of the Petroleum and Chemical Industry Planning Institute; Wu Haiyun, Vice Mayor of Lianyungang Municipal People's Government; Lu Zhongbao, Deputy Director of the Xuwei New District Management Committee; Ma Shaohua, Chairman of Meffenlong (Shanghai) Environmental Engineering Technology Co., Ltd.; Miao Hangen, Chairman of Shenghong Holding Group; and Bai Wei, General Manager of Sierbang Petrochemical, etc. ; also attended the signing ceremony.
The first phase of the project has an investment of nearly 300 million yuan and is expected to be put into production in 2022. The project can recover the carbon dioxide in industrial exhaust gas and produce the core component material of photovoltaic panels - photovoltaic-grade EVA resin, which is finally used for photovoltaic power generation, creating a new green path of "turning carbon into treasure".
The scale of carbon dioxide recovery designed by the project is 150,000 tonnes/year, which is equivalent to the annual carbon dioxide emissions of 15 sets of large petrochemical installations. After deep processing of upstream and downstream integrated devices, the recovered carbon dioxide can "turn waste into treasure" and produce 20,000 tonnes of photovoltaic-grade EVA resin. These materials can produce 50 million square meters of photovoltaic film. After all of them are used for photovoltaic power generation, the installed capacity can attain 5GW, and 6 to 9 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity can be generated in a year, which is equivalent to the one-year power generation of two million-kilowatt thermal power plants.
With the introduction of the "3060 target" of carbon peaking and carbon neutrality, carbon dioxide capture and utilization technology has developed rapidly, but sequestration faces a series of constraints such as space, leakage, safety and cost, and cannot fundamentally achieve carbon emission reduction. Through technological innovation, this project can achieve a 100% conversion rate for carbon dioxide recovery, while its recycling scale and technical process have reached the world's leading level. The project can not only achieve the goal of carbon reduction, but also change the source of downstream photovoltaic raw materials. In the past, some raw materials that needed to be produced from coal chemical industry can now be converted directly from carbon dioxide, which not only achieves a green source, but also will vigorously promote China's clean energy transformation.
Compared with traditional tree planting and afforestation to absorb greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, the "simulated photosynthesis" of this project has a stronger and more effective ability to absorb carbon dioxide. It can directly and actively absorb up to 150,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide per year, and indirectly reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 550,000 tonnes/year, which is equivalent to 37,000 hectares of forest planting area, approximately 370 square kilometers of land area, providing good social and ecological benefits.
As the main body of the project implementation, Sierbang Petrochemical under Shenghong Group operates the world's largest single-scale 2.4 million tonnes/year alcohol-based multi-co-production project. It mainly adopts the world's leading methanol-olefin technology. It is the core supplier of domestic scarce products such as photovoltaic-grade EVA, acrylonitrile, MMA, EO, etc., and its production capacity and output are at the forefront of the country.
As an important product of the industrial chain project, photovoltaic-grade EVA is the core raw material for the production of photovoltaic film, which directly determines the life and power generation efficiency of photovoltaic modules. Under the background of carbon neutrality, the demand for photovoltaic-grade EVA continues to grow rapidly, and the average annual compound growth rate is expected to exceed 25% in the next three years. In the past, due to equipment production capacity and process technology, China's photovoltaic-grade EVA production capacity was insufficient, and the import dependence was as high as 70%, which greatly affected the release of the production capacity of the photovoltaic industry. Through special technology, Sierbang Petrochemical has achieved a major breakthrough in the improvement of key indicators such as crystal point and melting finger, and the technology has reached the international advanced level and achieved stable mass production.
After the project is completed and put into use, the new green methanol will be converted into intermediate raw materials such as ethylene through the MTO (methanol olefin) process and transported to the downstream device to produce photovoltaic-grade EVA and other new energy materials, creating the world's first low-carbon recycling green industry chain of "carbon dioxide capture and utilization - green methanol - new energy materials". In addition to making carbon dioxide into photovoltaic materials, Sierbang Petrochemical also plans to convert carbon dioxide into food-grade carbon dioxide, as well as new energy battery electrolyte solvents and other projects with a scale of millions of tonnes, which will provide effective assistance for China's development of new energy industry, reduce carbon emissions, and provide a stable guarantee for the transformation of national clean energy.
After the "dual carbon" goal was put forward, it has become a strategic requirement for the high-quality development of the "14th Five-Year Plan" industry to promote green development and accelerate green transformation. The development mode of enterprises also faces new opportunities and challenges. Under the guidance of the new development concept in the new era, the Shenghong Group will rely on innovation to accelerate the transformation to the direction of new energy and new materials industry, and make every effort to build a high-tech industrial group with "strong basic raw material guarantee ability, world-leading scientific research and innovation ability, and world-class new energy and new material supply capacity".
