The Linde Group (Munich, Germany; www.the-linde-group.com) has brought six major air-separation units (ASU) onstream for its customer Shenhua Ningxia Coal Industry Group Co. in Lingwu near Yinchuan in the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region of Northwest China. Shenhua Ningxia is a member of Shenhua Group Co. Ltd., the largest coal-producing company in China, whose activities include the production of coal-derived chemicals. Linde was awarded the contract to build the units in February 2013.
Each of the six air separation units has a production capacity of around 100,000 standard cubic meters of gaseous oxygen per hour (Nm3/h). Shenhua Ningxia requires the oxygen for its coal-to-liquid (CTL) complex at the Ningdong Energy Chemical Base to produce four million metric tons of CTL products – mainly liquid fuel derived from coal – per year. This makes it one of the largest coal-to-liquid projects worldwide.
“CTL complexes on this scale require air separation units that can similarly offer benchmark capacity and efficiency performance. Thanks to our wealth of experience in large-scale plant engineering and our network of global and local partners, we were able to successfully complete this project on time. These execution capabilities provide further proof of our leading market position in the ASU segment,” comments John van der Velden, Member of the Board of Directors of Linde Engineering Division.
To realize this project, Linde’s engineering centres in Pullach (Germany) and Hangzhou (China) collaborated with its Schalchen (Germany) and Dalian (China) production locations. Collaboration with local contractors ran equally smoothly. It took just four months to assemble all six rectification coldboxes with their 2,000-plus metric tons of steel structures and various vessels.
In addition to the six plants started up by Linde, a further six ASUs are set to be soon completed in Lingwu. This will make it the world’s largest connected air separation complex with an overall oxygen production capacity of approximately 1.2 million Nm3/h.