On December 5, SXWL Energy Chemical Group Co., Ltd. new built refined Fischer-Tropsch wax production line [100,000 tons/year] was officially put into production.
The project started construction in October 2019, and a trial run was successful on October 17 this year. The project uses the wax oil produced by the coal-to-liquid unit as the raw material to separate and obtain high value-added Fischer-Tropsch wax products with different melting points and different brands at 52℃, 60℃, 70℃, 108℃ and 115℃. It is understood that the high melting point Fischer-Tropsch wax is mainly used in the fields of plastic processing, bright wax, textile auxiliaries, hot melt adhesives, inks, coatings, food and cosmetics, and has a broad market prospect.
Fischer Tropsch wax (Fischer Tropsch wax) is mainly composed of linear, saturated high-carbon alkanes with a relative molecular weight of 500-1000, which gives this chemical a fine crystal structure, high melting point, narrow melting point range, and low oil Content, low penetration, low mobility, low melt viscosity, hardness, wear resistance and high stability.
At present, there are two international companies that have relatively good industrialized Fischer-Tropsch wax synthesis equipment, namely Sasol of South Africa and Royal Dutch Shell Group (Shell). The two companies used their own research and development chemical synthesis processes to build multiple sets of synthesis devices of different types.
By the end of 2015, the supply of high melting point Fischer-Tropsch synthetic wax from Sasol is about 70,000 tons/year, and the supply of high melting point Fischer-Tropsch synthetic wax from Shell is about 50,000 tons/year. Germany's Evonik is one of the world's major Fischer-Tropsch wax suppliers. It does not have Fischer-Tropsch wax synthesis equipment. It mainly modifies imported high-melting Fischer-Tropsch synthetic crude waxes and has developed VESTOWAX products. Including hard alkanes, oxidized and partially saponified wax series.
Current Status of Fischer Tropsch Wax Industry in China
China’s indirect and direct coal liquefaction synthesis of coal-based Fischer-Tropsch wax technology with independent intellectual property rights was successfully developed by ZK Synthetic Oil Technology Company. Three sets of demonstration devices were built, namely NMYT, SXLA and SH Group synthetic oil demonstration devices. The construction of the three sets of devices started in 2006, and all of them have been put into commercial operation at present, but the three sets of devices are mainly for the production of diesel and naphtha. Among them, SXLA Coal-based Synthetic Oil Co., Ltd. produced a high melting point Fischer-Tropsch wax that meets the South African Sasol standard through process improvement in May 2014, filling the technical gap in this field in China.
At the same time, NMYT`s new 1.2 million tons of new equipment was already officially put into production in 2016.