Chemical Engineering Journal 240 (2014) 4554

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Chemical Engineering Journal

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/cej

Techno-economic performance of the coal-to-olens process with CCS

Dong Xiang 1, Siyu Yang 1, Xia Liu, Zihao Mai, Yu Qian
School of Chemical Engineering, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou 510640, PR China

h i g h l i g h t s
 Conduct a techno-economic analysis of the coal-to-olens (CTO) with CCS.
 Analyze effects of key factors on the CTO with appropriate capture rate 80%.
 Present strengths and weaknesses of the CTO compared to the methanol-to-olens.

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Received 5 September 2013
Received in revised form 21 November 2013
Accepted 23 November 2013
Available online 28 November 2013
Keywords:
Energy efciency
Cost
Coal-to-olens
CCS
Methanol-to-olens

a b s t r a c t
Coal-to-olens (CTO) has been attracting more attention of the chemical process industry, in the light of
the scarcity of oil resources and richness of coal in China. However, it is inherently accompanied with the
problem of severe greenhouse gas emissions. CTO processes therefore face increasing challenges from
other alternative processes, especially methanol-to-olens (MTO) process. This paper conducts a detailed
techno-economic analysis of the CTO process with CCS. The effect of carbon capture is studied. The CTO
process with 80% carbon capture is slightly less thermodynamically efcient than the conventional CTO
process. The corresponding mitigation cost of the process is 150 RMB/t, which is roughly equivalent to
the current carbon price. Thus, the effect of energetic and economic penalties on this carbon capture conguration is negligible. In comparison to the MTO process, the CTO process with CCS is competitive in
product cost even considering carbon tax and it is capable of resisting to market risk. CTO processes with
appropriate CO2 reduction are more applicable to olens industry in China.
2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
As the backbone of the petrochemical industry, olens production scale is critical to development of national economy. As more
and more oil-to-olens projects launched in China, the production
grows quickly, and the self-sufcient rate of ethylene and propylene will increases up to 53% and 74% by 2015 [1]. However, there
is still a big gap between the domestic supply and demand, which
is in urgently needed to be lled by olens based on alternative resources. From 2005 to 2011, coal accounted for 75.1% of the total
energy production of China, oil for 15.2%, and natural gas for
2.8%, as shown in Fig. 1. The oil import dependence was approached to 57% in 2012. Thus, development of the coal-based olens industry is favorable in the context of increasingly severe oil
supply shortage. There are now three coal-to-olens (CTO) projects

Corresponding author. Address: Center for Process Systems Engineering, School

of Chemical Engineering, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou
510640, PR China. Tel.: +86 20 87113046, +86 13802902300.
E-mail address: ceyuqian@scut.edu.cn (Y. Qian).
URL: http://www2.scut.edu.cn/ce/pse/qianyuen.htm (Y. Qian).
1
Dong Xiang and Siyu Yang contributed equally to this paper.
1385-8947/$ - see front matter 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cej.2013.11.051

under operation and other two CTO projects in plan in the next
there years in China. These installations are going to approach a
capacity of 3 Mt/y [3].
However, CTO is facing the problem of high CO2 emissions.
There have been a number of techniques of CO2 mitigation developed from chemical and physical methods [4]. For chemical methods, CO2 is reused mostly as feedstock to produce valued chemical
products. Although these methods enable us to exploit CO2 as a
valuable feedstock in many different applications such as the production of urea and methanol, their contribution to CO2 mitigation
is nite. Physical methods are generally regarded as geologically
storing CO2 underneath. In recent years, carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology has received increasing attention because
of its large capacity of reducing CO2 emissions. It is a more economical and efcient method compared to developing renewable
energy, retrotting major equipments, and improving energy integration for resource and energy saving [5].
A CCS process in general involves three stages: separating CO2
from ue gas, compressing CO2 for pipeline transport, and injecting CO2 into geologic reservoirs. For carbon capture, there are
mainly three technologies developed, including post-combustion
capture, oxy-fuel combustion capture, and pre-combustion

46

D. Xiang et al. / Chemical Engineering Journal 240 (2014) 4554

Nomenclature

Notations in formulation
h
domestic-made factor
CAC
administrative cost (RMB/t)
CCF
cumulative cash ow (RMB)
CCR
carbon capture rate (%)
CD
depreciation cost (RMB/t)
CDSC
distribution and selling cost (RMB/t)
CFi
cash ow of year i (RMB)
CO&M
operating & maintenance cost (RMB/t)

capture [6]. These technologies are usually applied in pulverizedcoal power plants and some chemical plants [7]. Introducing a
CCS will bring penalties on both energetic and economic performance [810]. For example, in most coal-based power plants, the
CO2 avoidance cost is about 250330 RMB/t, which is much
higher than the current carbon price. The penalties brought by
the CCS on chemical processes is, however, lower than those
on power generation processes [11,12]. It demonstrates that it
is necessary to assess the impact of CCS on the whole performance of CTO processes.
Planning a sound development roadmap for alternative olens
production requires a broad and comprehensive assessment. Techno-economic analysis is an essential part of this process. More
importantly, the role of CCS in CTO development is needed to be
analyzed to nd the trade-off among environmental protection, energy penalty, and economic performance. There have been some
studies on techno-economic analysis of CTO processes [1318].
However, the literatures on analyzing CTO processes with CCS from
techno-economic point of view could not be found. Besides, some
views back up developing methanol-to-olens (MTO) processes
since they have the advantages of low capital investment and environmental impact. There are now 1 MTO project under operation
and other 10 MTO projects in plan in the next three years in China,
which will approach to a capacity of 6.8 Mt/y [3]. With the potential challenge of the MTO process, how should people congure
CCS on the CTO process? We answer this question by the technoeconomic comparison of the CTO process with CCS and the MTO
process in this paper.
2. Process modeling
As a base of techno-economic analysis, major units of a CTO
process are modeled, including an air separation unit (ASU), a coal
gasication unit (CG), an acid gas removal unit (AGR), a carbon
capture and storage unit (CCS), a water gas shift unit (WGS), a
methanol synthesis unit (MS), and a methanol-to-olens unit
(MTO). For a plant with given capacity and specied operating conditions, the model calculates all mass and energy ows. The details
of the modeling are described in the following sections.

CPOC
CR
CTS&M
CU
EI
EIrJ
EwCCS
Ew/oCCS
MC
OP
OYi
PC
PCw CCS
PCw/o CCS
RFi
Sj
SrJ
sf
TCI

plant overhead cost (RMB/t)

raw material cost (RMB/t)
cost of CO2 transportation, sequestration and monitoring (RMB/t)
utilities cost (RMB/t)
equipment investment (RMB)
reference equipment investment of unit j (RMB)
quantity of CO2 emitted from the CTO plant with CCS
(Mt/y)
quantity of CO2 emitted from the CTO plant without CCS
(Mt/y)
mitigation cost (RMB/t)
olens price (RMB/t)
olens yield (Mt/y)
product cost (RMB/t)
product cost of the CTO plant with CCS (RMB/t)
product cost of the CTO plant without CCS (RMB/t)
ratio factor of component i (%)
practical scale of unit j
reference scale of unit j
scale factor
total capital investment (RMB/t/y)

3500
3000
Hydro,Nuclear,Wind
2500
2000

Mt

Abbreviations
AGR
acid gas removal
ASU
air separation unit
CCS
carbon capture and storage
CG
coal gasication
CTO
coal-to-olens
LHV
lower heating value
MS
methanol synthesis
MTO
methanol-to-olens
RMB
ren min bi
WGS
water gas shift

Natural gas
Crude oil
Coal

1500
1000
500
0
1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010

Year
Fig. 1. Prole of major energy production in China [2].

2.1. Coal-to-olens process

The ow diagram of the CTO process, including the MTO process, is shown in Fig. 2. Coal and water are gasied with the oxygen
agent from the ASU, to produce syngas in the CG. The hot syngas is
quenched in a radiant cooler and a convection condenser, where
heat is recovered to generate steam. The syngas is then fed into
the WGS to increase the ratio of H2/CO for the methanol synthesis.
Before methanol synthesis, the syngas is cleaned in the AGR to remove H2S and CO2. The clean syngas is then sent to the MS to produce methanol. The crude methanol solution is concentrated to
90% (moral fraction) before fed into the MTO. Prior to olens separation, there are a serial of steps: quenching, washing, drying, and
compression. The front-end depropanization separation technique
is applied to separate olens into ethylene and propylene [18].
2.1.1. Coal gasication unit
In the CG, Texaco gasication technique was adopted. For modeling, coal is rstly divided into three kinds of nonconventional
matter as coke, ash, and unburned carbon. Then nonconventional
matter is decomposed in RYield model in Aspen Plus by element

47

D. Xiang et al. / Chemical Engineering Journal 240 (2014) 4554

Coal

Water

WGS reactor

Acid gas
absorber

H2S concentration

tower

Tail gas

Water
Mill

Tail gas

Screen

Oxygen
from ASU

Water

Scrubber

Raw syngas

H 2S

Steam
Gasifier
&
Cooler
Radiant

Air

N2
Water

Convective
Cooler

Water & slag

Methanol

Waste water

Regenerator

Steam
Clean syngas


Quenching
tower

Water
Methanol

Lurgi
methanol
reactor

DMTO
reactor
Water
scrubber
Water



Purge gas


Unreacted
gas

NaOH

Fuel gas

Methanol

Dryer

Alkaline
tower
Waste water


Water

Ethylene

Propylene


C2 splitter
Atmospheric
distillation
column

Crude methanol
Pressure
distillation
column

C3 splitter



Bottom liquid

Depropanizer

C4=
Demethanizer

Dethanizer

Ethane

Propane

Fig. 2. Process ow diagram of the CTO process.

analysis [19]. After this, decomposed components, O2, water, etc.

are all fed into RGibbs reactor, which calculates chemical equilibrium by Gibbs energy minimization. The composition of gaseous
mix was determined according to the property of the input coal
as shown in Table 1. The simulation was veried by comparing
the composition of the output syngas with that of Zheng and Furinskys work [21]. The simulated composition is similar to the reference composition with only a small relative error less than 1.5%
[22].
2.1.2. Methanol synthesis unit
For modeling of methanol synthesis, Lurgi synthesis reactor was
used and modeled by using the Requil model in Aspen Plus. In general, there are several major reversible reactions in the methanol
synthesis reactor. CuZnAl catalyst was used for this reaction
with its suitable temperature 513 K and pressure 8.2 MPa [22,
23]. The main reactions are shown in Eqs. (1 and 2):

CO 2H2 ! CH3 OH

Table 1
Properties of coal in Yanzhou, China [20].
Proximate analysis (wt.%)
Moisture content
Fixed carbon
Volatile matter
Ash

Ultimate analysis (wt.%, dry)

5.81
49.85
37.24
7.10

Ash
Carbon
Hydrogen
Nitrogen
Sulfur
Oxygen

7.53
73.64
5.24
1.13
2.63
9.83

CO2 3H2 ! CH3 OH H2 O

The raw syngas from the CG is cleaned in the AGR presented in

the CCS and then shifted into syngas with the molar ratio between
hydrogen and carbon monoxide of about 2 [24]. The clean syngas is
put into the MS as the feedstock. Following the synthesis reaction,
the unreacted syngas are separated out from the chemical products
and recycled back to the MS to increase the methanol production
[6]. RadFrac model was used to simulate the separation columns
and Peng-Rob was selected as the thermodynamic method. Details
of the simulation refer to the authors previous work [22].
2.1.3. Methanol-to-olens unit
Methanol with molar fraction 90% is converted into product gas
in MTO reactor. The hot product gas is cooled in the quenching
tower and cleaned in the alkaline tower with NaOH solution to remove H2S and CO2. After then, ethylene and propylene are extracted by the front-end depropanization seperation technique.
DMTO technique was used to synthesize olens. The main reactions in the synthesis reactor could be summarized as follow:

2CH3 OH ! C2 H4 2H2 O

3CH3 OH ! C3 H6 3H2 O

4CH3 OH ! C4 H8 4H2 O

An attrition resistant SAPO-34 was employed as the catalyst.

According to the specication of the catalyst, the temperature
and pressure were xed at 763 K and pressure 0.22 MPa. In this
condition, the methanol conversion has reported to be close to

48

D. Xiang et al. / Chemical Engineering Journal 240 (2014) 4554

100%. The olens synthesis was modeled by Rstoic model in Aspen

Plus. The composition of product gas was calculated according to
the Ref. [25]. RadFrac model was used to simulate rectifying columns. The process compressors were modeled by assuming common isentropic and mechanical efciency. The NRTL, ELECNRTL,
and RKS-BM were adopted as the thermodynamic methods of
water scrubber, alkaline tower, and separation tower, respectively.
Details of the simulation referred to the authors previous work
[18,26].
2.2. Carbon capture and storage process
The CCS includes carbon capture, compression, transportation,
and storage. The process ow diagram is shown in Fig. 3. The crude
syngas from the gasifer consists of impurities that are mainly ash
and acid gases. It is necessary to remove these impurities before
methanol synthesis. We employed Rectisol method in this paper.
The syngas from the WGS is fed into the water scrubber to remove
ammonia and y ash. After ash dehydration, it is fed into the bottom of the acid gas absorber and absorbed by top-down low temperature methanol, which is obtained from the regeneration tower
and cooled through multistage cooling to 223 K. The upper part of
the absorber mainly removes CO2 while the lower part removes
sulfur containing compounds. Without CO2 capture process, CO2
is separated and exhausted to environment by using N2 as the
stripping gas. In this case, the exhausted gas is a mixture of N2
and CO2. For CO2 capture process, a desorber and a companying
ash are introduced to purify CO2 to the high concentration of
about 98%. The capture rate of CO2 could be increased by changing
the temperature and pressure of the ash. The H2S separated from
methanol regenerator is placed into CLAUS conversion process for
sulfur recovery.
For modeling, RadFrac model was used to simulate the acid gas
absorber, the desorber, the H2S concentration tower, and the
regenerator. Flash model and Compr model were adopted for simulating ashes and compressors, respectively. PSRK was selected as
the thermodynamic method. The described CCS referred to the CCS
demonstration of coal-to-liquild process installed by Shenhua
group in Ordos, China [27]. Different from this CCS, we use pipeline

to transport CO2 in our model. Puried CO2 is rstly compressed to

15 MPa and then transported to and injected into underground
reservoirs. 20 km for transportation distance and the saline aquifer
at 2 km deep as the geological position of the reservoirs was
conducted.
3. Analysis methodology
In this section, we mainly analyze the CTO process with CCS
from technical and economic points of view. A few indexes are selected involving energy efciency, capital investment, product cost,
and cumulative cash ow.
The energy efciency is dened as the product energy generated by all input energy, as shown in Eq. (6). The energy of coal,
methanol, and olens is calculated based on their lower heating
values. The all input energy involves both the energy of feedstock
and utilities.

Energy efficiency

Another technical factor is carbon capture rate (CCR) which is

dened as the mass ow of captured CO2 divided by CO2 emissions,
as shown in Eq. (7).

CCR

Captured CO2 mass flow Mt=y

CO2 emissions Mt=y

For economic indexes, the capital invested for manufacturing

and plant facilities is dened as the xed capital investment, while
those for the plant operation is dened as the working capital. The
sum of the xed capital investment and the working capital is dened as the total capital investment. In order to evaluate these indexes of olens production processes, it is necessary to know the
capital investment of the basic equipments of the CTO process that
could be calculated according to the benchmark case shown in Table 2. The detailed calculation of these equipments follows Eq. (8).
While the equipment investment of CO2 transportation and storage
was calculated by the Ref. [30]. The other components of the total
capital investment could be determined according to their ratios to

Clean syngas
Acid gas
absorber

Product energyMW
All input energyMW

Tail gas
H2S concentration
tower

Water
Desorber

Tail gas

Water
scrubber
H2S
Crude syngas
Air
N2
S

Methanol

Waste water

Regenerator
CO2

CO2 transport
(Pipeline)

Fig. 3. Process ow diagram of the CCS process.

CO2 storage
(Saline acquifer)

49

D. Xiang et al. / Chemical Engineering Journal 240 (2014) 4554

the equipment investment. The ratios are shown in Table 3 and the
calculation follows Eq. (9) [3133]. In this paper, the capital investment was updated to 2012 prices by using the Chemical Engineering Plant Cost Index [34,35]. The currency exchange rate between
US$ and RMB was 6.2 in 2012 and the olens price was set to be
10,000 RMB/t [36].

X
EI
h  EIrj 
J

Sj
Srj

Table 3
Ratio factors for capital investment.
Component
(1) Direct investment
(1.1) Equipment
(1.2) Installation
(1.3) Instruments and controls
(1.4) Piping
(1.5) Electrical
(1.6) Buildings(including services)
(1.7) Land
(2) Indirect investment
(2.1) Engineering and supervision
(2.2) Construction expenses
(2.3) Contractors fee
(2.4) Contingency
(3) Fixed capital investment
(4) Working capital
(5) Total capital investment

!sf

X
TCI EI  1
RFi

8
!
9

where EI is the equipment investment, h is the domestic-made factor, EIrj is the reference equipment investment of unit j, Sj is the
practical scale of unit j, Srj is the reference scale of unit j, sf is the
scale factor, TCI is the total capital investment, RFi is the ratio factor
of capital investment of component i.
For calculation of the product cost, we made some assumptions
as listed in Table 4. The consumption of raw materials and utilities
was determined according to simulation results. Their corresponding costs were calculated on the basis of the average prices of 2012
in China [18]. Operating labor cost was calculated referring to
Hans work [13]. A straight-line method was adopted to calculate
the depreciation cost under the assumption of 20 years life time
and 4% salvage value. CO2 TS&M cost was calculated by Mantripragada and Rubins work [11]. The rest part of product cost was
calculated according to the ratio to product cost [31,32]. The product cost is dened as the sum of the above components as shown in
Eq. (10).

PC C R C U C O&M C D C POC C AC C DSC C TS&M

PC wCCS  PC w=oCCS
Ew=oCCS  EwCCS

100
48
24
57
29
71
5
48
43
19
33
477
80
557

Table 4
Assumptions for the estimation of product cost.
Component

Basis

(1) Coal

Coal price 620 RMB/t; methanol 2,400 RMB/

t
Water 2 RMB/t, electricity 0.7 RMB/kWh,
steam 42 RMB/GJ

(2) Utilities
(3) Operating & Maintenance
(3.1) Operating labor
(3.2) Direct supervisory and
clerical labor
(3.3) Maintenance and repairs
(3.4) Operating supplies
(3.5) Laboratory charge
(4) Depreciation
(5) Plant overhead cost
(6) Administrative cost
(7) Distribution and selling
cost
(8) CO2 TS&M
(9) Product cost

10

where PC is the product cost, CR is the raw material cost, CU is the

utilities cost, CO&M is the operating & maintenance cost, CD is the
depreciation cost, CPOC is the plant overhead cost, CAC is the administrative cost, CDSC is the distribution and selling cost, CTS&M is the
cost of CO2 transportation, sequestration, and monitoring.
The cost related to CO2 emissions reduction should also be considered during product cost estimation. In this paper, we used mitigation cost (MC) to evaluate the cost according to Refs. [37,38]. MC
represents the difference of cost per ton of CO2 emissions avoided
between the plant without CCS and the plant with CCS expressed
in Eq. (11).

MC

Ratio factor (RF, %)

CTO 300 labors, MTO 100 labors, 100,000

RMB/labor/year
20% of operating labor
2% of xed capital investment
0.7% of xed capital investment
15% of operating labor
Life period 20y, salvage value 4%
60% (3.1 + 3.2 + 3.3)
2% of product cost
2% of product cost
64 RMB/t CO2
(1) + (2) + (3) + (4) + (5) + (6) + (7) + (8)

Cumulative cash ow was calculated by adding all of the cash

ows from the inception of projects, as shown in simplied Eq.
(12). As project life, 23 years was used in this paper, of which
3 years for plant construction and 20 years for operation. Assumptions were made for construction phase that the expenditure factor
was 80% for the rst 2 years and 20% for the last year [37].

11

CCF

where PC is the product cost of the CTO plant, E is the quantity of

CO2 emitted from the CTO plant, the subscripts w CCS and w/o
CCS are referred to the plant congurations with and without CCS.
Besides the capital investment and the product cost, there is another important economic factor-plant cash ow. It is usually considered as the cumulative ow over the life of the project.

X
i

CFi

X
OP  PC C D i  OYi

12

where CCF is the cumulative cash ow, CFi is the cash ow of year i,
OP is the olens price, PC is the product cost, CD is the depreciation
cost, OYi is the olens yield of year i.

Table 2
Summary of investment data for main equipment components.
Unit

Benchmark

Scale (SrJ )

Size factor (sf)

Domestic-made factor (h)

EIrJ (M$)

Refs.

ASU
Coal handing
CG
WGS
AGR

Oxygen supply
Daily coal input
Daily coal input
Material caloric value
Sulfur output
Pure CO2 captured
Syngas input
Methanol input

21.3 kg/s
27.4 kg/s
39.2 kg/s
1377 MW
29.3 mol/s
2064.4 mol/s
10,810 mol/s
62.5 kg/s

0.50
0.67
0.67
0.67
0.67
0.67
0.67
0.60

0.50
0.65
0.80
0.65
0.65
0.65
0.65
1.00

45.70
29.10
78.00
39.80
67.30
32.80
20.40
223.06

[22]
[22]
[22]
[28]
[28]
[28]
[22]
[29]

MS
MTO

50

D. Xiang et al. / Chemical Engineering Journal 240 (2014) 4554

4. Results and discussion

This section reports the mass and energy data as well as compares the different cases of CTO processes with CCR ranging from
60% to 95%. A MTO process is also involved in this comparison,
aiming to get which alternative olens production should be developed in large-scale. In the end of this section, we analyze three
important parameters, plant scale, carbon tax, feedstock price to
nd their effects on economic performance.
4.1. Energy efciency analysis
The CTO plant with CCS and the MTO plant producing the same
0.7 Mt/y olens were simulated in Aspen Plus, which produce all
process data needed to assess the techno-economic and environmental performance of cases studied. As an illustrative example
for mass and energy balance, Table 5 presents the main stream
properties in key points of the CTO plant diagram, and Table 6 presents properties of N2 stream, CO2 stream, and tail gas stream of
CCS at CCR 60%, 80%, and 95%. The properties of shift syngas stream
and clean syngas stream of CCS can be found in Table 5.
The total material and energy consumption of MTO and CTO
plants at different CCRs is shown in Table 7. The energy consumptions or generations of ASU, CG, WGS, CCS, MS, and MTO are also
placed in this table. Producing 0.7 Mt/y of olens needs about
1.8 Mt/y methanol for the MTO plant and 2.87 Mt/y coal for the
CTO plant. The resulting CO2 emissions of the CTO plant are close
to 4.05 Mt/y. The energy efciency to olens product in Table 5
is calculated according to Eq. (6). With shorter conversion route,
the energy efciency of the MTO plant is around 80.98%, much
higher than that of the CTO plant which is only 36.16%.
CTO processes with CCS have two scenarios divided by CCR 80%.
In the rst scenario, the CTO process has a low CCR between 60%

and 80%. The corresponding energy efciency ranges from 35.86%

to 35.69% since the electricity consumption changes from
172.54 MW to 187.58 MW. In the second scenario, the CTO process
has a high CCR between 80% and 95%. The corresponding energy
efciency ranges from 35.69% to 35.38% since the electricity consumption changes from 187.58 MW to 215.93 MW. It is clear that
the increasing rate of electricity consumption of CCS in the second
scenario is about 2 times larger than that in the rst scenario
shown in Fig. 4. The decrease of energy efciency is caused by
the increase of electricity consumption of the CCS. On the one
hand, we should raise the ash temperature and reduce the ash
pressure in order to increase CCR and cool the methanol out of
the ash to 223 K for recycling use. Correspondingly, the increasingly temperature difference leads to bigger ammonia cold energy
consumption when CCR changing from 60% to 95%. On the other
hand, with increasing CCR, CO2 processing capacity and the compression energy consumption increase linearly, as shown in Fig. 4.
4.2. Economic analysis
4.2.1. Capital investment, product cost, and cumulative cash ow
The breakdown of total capital investment of CTO plants is
shown in Fig. 5. The MTO takes 45.6% of the total capital investment, followed by the ASU and CG (about 37.3%). It is seen that
additional investment for CCS makes the total capital investment
increase from 2.52  104 RMB/t/y to 2.71  104 RMB/t/y when
CCR is as high as 95%.
On the other hand, the product cost of MTO and CTO plants are
calculated and shown in Fig. 6. For the CTO plant, most of capital is
expended on purchasing coal, accounting for 39.5% of the product
cost. The second largest is the cost for utilities, about 24.8% of the
product cost. The total capital investment is involved in the product cost as the form of depreciation, amounting to 16.8% of the

Table 5
Simulation results of main streams in the CTO process.
Streama

Coal (1)

Molar fraction (%)

N2

O2

AR

H2O

CO

CO2

H2S

H2

CH4

CH3OH

C2H6

C2H4

C3H8

C3H6

C4H10

C4H8

C4H6

C5H12

Molar ow

(kmol/hr)
Mass ow
358,295
(kg/hr)
Temperature
314
(K)
Pressure
0.1
(Mpa)
Enthalpy
1128.52
(MW)
a

Water
(2)

Oxygen
(3)

Syngas
(4)

Shift
syngas
(5)

N2 (6)

Tail gas
(7)

Clean
syngas
(8)

Methanol
(9)

Product
gas (10)

C4=
(11)

Ethylene
(12)

Propylene
(13)

100.00

10,708

1.39
95.00
3.61

10,358

0.87

1.03
19.07
40.47
11.67
0.34
26.55

36,359

0.85

0.98
01.61
18.71
31.56
0.32
45.97

37,676

100.00

4893

30.21

0.99

0.66
67.10

1.02

0.02

16,410

1.00

0.81

27.29
3.46

67.44

25,433

0.11

10.18

0.01

89.70

8017

69.59

0.06

0.44
3.16
1.11
0.12
0.25
13.75
0.57
8.90
0.04
1.63

0.38
11,002

0.74
3.50
2.56
92.61
0.21
0.38
148

0.18
99.82

1499

0.38
99.62

883

192,926

333,886

771,303

794,423

137,070

633,439

283,069

245,440

245,440

8253

42,064

37,184

314

383

425

363

293

302

302

318

763

326

182

315

0.1

4.1

2.76

5.00

0.2

0.2

2.78

0.40

0.22

0.55

0.20

1.73

842.74

6.58

1347.27

1535.44

0.22

1206.44

308.34

542.73

463.06

0.30

19.74

4.68

In order to simplify the table, some minor streams are not included, such as water & slag stream in CG unit, S stream in AGR unit, and purge gas stream in MS unit.

51

D. Xiang et al. / Chemical Engineering Journal 240 (2014) 4554

Table 6
Simulation results of CCS at CCR 60%, 80%, and 95%.
Stream

CCR 60%

Molar fraction (%)

N2
AR
CO
CO2
H2
CH3OH
Mole ow (kmol/hr)
Mass ow (kg/hr)
Temperature (K)
Pressure (Mpa)
Enthalpy (MW)

CCR 80%

CCR 95%

N2

CO2

Tail gas

N2

CO2

Tail gas

N2

CO2

Tail gas

100.00

2350
65,832
293
0.2
0.10

0.04
0.02
0.75
98.50
0.69
0.03
6958
303,295
293
15
773.01

34.93
2.34
0.82
60.18
1.73

6909
258,877
302
0.2
436.40

100.00

1478
27,397
293
0.2
0.04

0.03
0.02
0.59
98.90
0.43
0.03
9255
404,681
293
15
976.51

32.12
4.98
1.66
57.30
3.94

3240
119,068
302
0.2
195.44

100.00

391
10,953
293
0.2
0.02

0.03
0.02
0.54
99.00
0.38
0.03
10,984
480,601
293
15
1226.38

48.98
17.39
5.31
14.73
13.59

925
26,715
302
0.2
14.29

Table 7
Mass and energy performance results from the techno-economic model for MTO and CTO plants at different CCRs.
Item

MTO plant

CTO plant with CCS

CCR 0%

CCR 60%

CCR 70%

CCR 80%

CCR 90%

CCR 95%

Input
Coal (Mt/y)/(MW LHV)a
Methanol (Mt/y)/(MW LHV)b
Net Electricity input (MWe)c
Net Steam input (MWth)c
ASU (MWe/MWth)
CG (MWe/MWth)
WGS (MWe/MWth)
AGR or CCS (MWe/MWth)
MS (MWe/MWth)
MTO (MWe/MWth)
Total energy input (MW)

1.80/1250
36.61
123.98

36.61/123.98
1410.59

2.87/2800.24

146.21
212.75
144.57/
70.74/
/15.10
9.86/26.59
25.91/77.28
36.61/123.98
3159.20

2.87/2800.24

172.54
212.75
144.57/
70.74/
/15.10
36.19/26.59
25.91/77.28
36.61/123.98
3185.53

2.87/2800.24

179.10
212.75
144.57/
70.74/
/15.10
42.75/26.59
25.91/77.28
36.61/123.98
3192.09

2.87/2800.24

187.58
212.75
144.57/
70.74/
/15.10
51.23/26.59
25.91/77.28
36.61/123.98
3200.57

2.87/2800.24

204.14
212.75
144.57/
70.74/
/15.10
67.79/26.59
25.91/77.28
36.61/123.98
3217.13

2.87/2800.24

215.93
212.75
144.57/
70.74/
/15.10
79.58/26.59
25.91/77.28
36.61/123.98
3228.92

Output
Ethylene (Mt/y)/(MW LHV)b
Propylene (Mt/y)/(MW LHV)b
C4=(Mt/y)/(MW LHV)b
Product energy (MW LHV)
CO2 emissions (Mt/y)
Energy efciency (%, LHV basis)

0.33/538.54
0.30/489.57
0.07/114.24
1142.35
Negligible
80.98

0.33/538.54
0.30/489.57
0.07/114.24
1142.35
4.05
36.16

0.33/538.54
0.30/489.57
0.07/114.24
1142.35
1.39
35.86

0.33/538.54
0.30/489.57
0.07/114.24
1142.35
1.04
35.79

0.33/538.54
0.30/489.57
0.07/114.24
1142.35
0.69
35.69

0.33/538.54
0.30/489.57
0.07/114.24
1142.35
0.35
35.50

0.33/538.54
0.30/489.57
0.07/114.24
1142.35
0.17
35.38

The LHV is based on Ref. [39].

The LHV is based on Ref. [16].
c
MWe represents the energy of electricity and MWth represents the energy of steam. The symbol of  are used to make a distinction between generated and consumed
energy.
b

90

70

1.8
1.6
1.4

60

1.2

50

1
40

0.8

30

0.6

20

0.4

10

0.2

CO2 emissions (Mt/y)

Energy consumption (MW)

80

0
60

65

70

75

80

85

90

95

CCR (%)

Total capital investment (1000 RMB/t/y)

2
Electricity consumption for ammonia cold
Electricity consumption for compression
CCS electricity consumption
CO2 emissions

40
Increase of CCS
WGS
ASU

35
30

MTO
AGR

MS
CG

25
20
15
10
5
0
0

60

70

80

90

95

CCR (%)
Fig. 4. The relationship between CCR and electricity consumption.
Fig. 5. Distribution of total capital investment for CTO plants at different CCRs.

product cost, which is the next major contributor to product cost.

By introducing the CCS process, a large amount of CO2 is mitigated,
ranging from 7360 t/d to 11,660 t/d.
However, there is additional cost required for CCS energy use,
geological sequestration, and monitoring. For the scenario with

low CCR, the product cost increases from 6911 RMB/t to

7131 RMB/t, leading to an increase of 3.2%. For the scenario with
high CCR, the product cost increases to 7437 RMB/t, leading to an
increase of 7.6%. It is obvious that the big change happens at the

52

D. Xiang et al. / Chemical Engineering Journal 240 (2014) 4554

6000
CO2 TS&M
Administrative cost
Depreciation

8000

Distribution and selling cost

Plant overhead cost
Operating & Maintenance

Product cost (RMB/t)

7000
6000
5000
4000
3000
2000

Cumulative cash flow (million RMB)

9000

5000

CTO without CCS

4000

CTO with CCR 80%

3000

CTO with CCR 95%

MTO

2000
1000
0

10

-1000

1000
0
MTO

CCR 80%, which divides CTO plants with CCS into low capture conguration and high capture conguration. The big change could
also be found in the mitigation cost and energy consumption of
CCS, as shown in Figs. 7 and 4. Thus, CTO with this carbon capture
conguration is appropriate choice for olens production considering energy penalties, economic performance, and environmental
protection. The product cost of the MTO plant is about
7896 RMB/t, which is much higher than that of the CTO plant with
CCS. The methanol cost is the biggest part, amounting to 78.1%, followed by the utilities cost of 6.7% and depreciation cost of 6.0%.
As shown in Fig. 8, the plant with the highest cumulative cash
ow is the CTO plant without CCS, followed by the ones with
CCS and the MTO plant. The cumulative cash ow decreases from
5.0  109 RMB to 3.5  109 RMB as CCR increasing from 0% to
95%. While the cash ow of the MTO plant is only 2.9  109 RMB.
Although the capital investments of CTO plants are about 2 times
larger than that of MTO plant, the ratio of cumulative cash ow
to the MTO plant is 1.21.7. In Fig. 8, we could also nd the
break-even point and the payback period. The payback period is
about 8 y for the plant without CCS, about 9 y for the plant with
CCS, and about 7 y for the MTO plant.
4.2.2. Effects of plant scale, carbon tax, and feedstock price
As discussed above, we select an appropriate CCR equal to 80%
for case study of the effect of production scale, carbon tax, and
feedstock price on its economic performance.

20

23

Year

-2000

CCR 0% CCR 60% CCR 70% CCR 80% CCR 90% CCR 95%

Fig. 6. Distribution of product cost for MTO and CTO plants at different CCRs.

15

Fig. 8. Cumulative cash ow of MTO and CTO plants at different CCRs.

As production scale is one of the most important factor for economic performance, we therefore study the effect of this factor on
the capital investment and the product cost of the CTO plant with
CCS. According to the results, it is clear to nd that the capital
investment will decrease as the plant capacity varies from
0.3 Mt/y to 2.0 Mt/y, as shown in Fig. 9. The total capital investment of a 2.0 Mt/y plant is about 46.8% of a 0.3 Mt/y plant. Since
depreciation is a important factor, the product cost also decreases
with increasing plant capacity. However, the production scale
shows less effect on product cost. For example, the product cost
of a 2.0 Mt/y plant is about 19.3% less than a 0.3 Mt/y plant, as
shown in Fig. 10. For the MTO plant, the effect of economies of
scale is relatively small since the capital investment of the MTO
plant is less than half of the CTO plant.
As the largest developing country, China is facing increasing
criticism for the largest greenhouse gas emissions. Chinas 12th
ve-year plan clearly promised that a carbon trading market would
be gradually established and CO2 emissions intensity be reduced at
the same time. The city of Shenzhen launched a carbon trading
scheme on 18 June 2013, Chinas rst market for compulsory carbon trading. The scheme covers 635 industrial companies and
some public buildings accounting for about 40% of the citys emissions [40]. This means that there will be an explicit cost associated
with CO2 emissions in the near future in China.
The effect of increasing carbon tax on the product cost is shown
in Fig. 11. It is obvious that when carbon tax exceeds 250 RMB/t
the product cost of the CTO plant without CCS is higher than that
of the MTO plant, while the product cost of the CTO plant with

Total capital investment (1000RMB/t/y)

190

Mitigation cost (RMB/t CO2)

180
170
160
150
140
130
120

40
35

Incremental investment of CCS

30

CTO without CCS

25
20
15
10
5
0
0.3

60

65

70

75

80

85

90

CCR (%)
Fig. 7. Relationship between CCR and mitigation cost.

95

0.5

0.7

0.9

1.1

1.3

1.5

1.7

2.0

Capacity (Mt/y)
Fig. 9. Total capital investment of the CTO plant with CCS varying with different
capacities.

D. Xiang et al. / Chemical Engineering Journal 240 (2014) 4554

9000
Incremental cost of CCS

Product cost (RMB/t)

8000

CTO without CCS

7000
6000
5000
4000
3000
2000
1000
0
0.3

0.5

0.7

0.9

1.1

1.3

1.5

1.7

5. Conclusions

Fig. 10. Product cost of the CTO plant with CCS varying with different capacities.

9000

Product cost (RMB/t)

8500
8000
7500
7000
6500
CTO without CCS

CTO with CCS

MTO

5500
5000
0

30

60

90 120 150 180 210 240 270 300 330 360 400

Carbon tax (RMB/t CO2)

Fig. 11. Effect of carbon tax on product cost.

Product cost (RMB/t)

15000
CTO without CCS

13000

CTO with CCS

MTO

11000

shown in Fig. 12. This means that the product cost of the MTO
plant is highly affected by feedstock price and that for CTO plants
the inuence is relatively small. Besides, coal price is more stable
than methanol which is mostly determined by oil price in the past
several years [18]. Although MTO plants have advantages of low
capital investment and low environmental impact, their economic
performances are easily intervened by methanol price. In other
words, MTO plants have less anti-risk capability of market uctuation than CTO plants in China. Expanding development of CTO
plants with CCS should be encouraged since it could relieve the
conict between the supply and demand of olens, meanwhile reduce CO2 emissions, and manifest a strong anti-risk capability to
the raw material market.

2.0

Capacity (Mt/a)

6000

53

9000

Techno-economic performance of the CTO process with CCS was

analyzed in this paper. The CTO process was also compared with
the MTO process. The performance results indicate that the CTO
plant with CCS is slightly less thermodynamic efcient than the
conventional CTO plant without CCS. For the CTO plant with 80%
carbon capture compared to the CTO plant, the total capital investment increases by 6%, from 2.52  104 RMB/t/y to 2.69  104 RMB/
t/y, and the product cost rises nearly 11%, from 6442 RMB/t to
7131 RMB/t.
The effects of economies of scale and carbon tax were also analyzed. It was found that production scale has more effect on capital
investment than product cost. If the scale of the CTO plant with CCS
increases from 0.3 Mt/y to 2.0 Mt/y, the total capital investment
and product cost will drop approximately 53.2% and 19.3%. The
mitigation cost of CTO with CCS is about 150 RMB/t, roughly equivalent to the current carbon price.
On the other hand, the product cost of the MTO plant is
7896 RMB/t, which is much higher that of the CTO plant with
CCS even in the context of carbon tax as high as 400 RMB/t.
Although the MTO plant has low capital investment and CO2 emissions, its product cost ratio to the CTO plant with CCS is 0.9, its
cumulative cash ow ratio is 0.7, and its economic performance
is susceptible to uctuation of market price. In contrast, the product cost of the CTO with CCS is lower and it could resist market risk.
In a word, developing CTO processes with CCS is important to the
sustainable development of olens industry in China from the
perspectives of resource reserve, economic performance, and environmental protection.

7000

Acknowledgments

5000
3000
200/800

400/1600

600/2400

800/3200

1000/4000

1200/4800

Coal price/methanol price (RMB/t)

Fig. 12. Effect of prices of feedstock on product cost.

CCS is much lower than that of the MTO plant when carbon tax is
as high as 400 RMB/t. For the CTO plant with CCS, the break-even
carbon tax between CTO plants with and without CCS is about
150 RMB/t, roughly equivalent to the current carbon price. Thus,
the CTO plant with CCS could be rstly built to demonstrate the
potential application of CCS technologies from the aspects of environmental protection and overall economic performance. It is
important to underline that, if the carbon price increases up to
300400 RMB/t in the next few years, the application of CCS technologies for large-scale CTO plants will become very protable.
The effect of feedstock price on product cost of the MTO plant is
about 2 times that of the CTO plants with and without CCS, as

The authors are grateful for nancial support from the China
NSF Key Project (No. 21136003), the China NSF Project (No.
21306056), the National Basic Research Program (No.
2012CB720504; 2014CB744306), the Fundamental Research Funds
for the Central Universities (No. 2013ZP0010), and Guangdong
Province NSF Team Project (No. S2011030001366).
References
[1] Y. Qu, The prospect of Chinas olen market during the twelfth ve-year plan,
Petro. Petrochem. Today 20 (2012) 1625 (in Chinese).
[2] National Bureau of Statistics, China energy statistics yearbook, China Stat.
Press, Beijing, 2010 (in Chinese).
[3] ICIS, China develops coal-to-olens projects, which could lead to ethylene selfsufciency, 2012 (assessed 25.08.2013), <http://www.icis.com/Articles/2012/
02/27/9535534/china+develops+coal-to-olens+projects+which+could+lead+
to+ethylene.html>.
[4] P. Markewitz, W. Kuckshinrichs, W. Leitner, J. Linssen, P. Zapp, R. Bongartz, A.
Schreiber, T.E. Mller, Worldwide innovations in the development of carbon
capture technologies and the utilization of CO2, Energy Environ. Sci. 5 (2012)
72817305.

54

D. Xiang et al. / Chemical Engineering Journal 240 (2014) 4554

[5] K.Z. House, C.F. Harvey, M.J. Aziz, D.P. Schrag, The energy penalty of postcombustion CO2 capture & storage and its implications for retrotting the U.S.
installed base, Energy Environ. Sci. 2 (2009) 193205.
[6] Z. Luo, M. Fang, M. Li, L. Gao, The Technology of CO2 Capture, Storage and
Usage, China Elec. Power Press, Beijing, 2012 (in Chinese).
[7] H. Lin, H. Jin, L. Gao, W. Han, Techno-economic evaluation of coal-based
polygeneration systems of synthetic fuel and power with CO2 recovery, Energy
Convers. Manage. 52 (2011) 274283.
[8] A. Pettinau, F. Ferrara, C. Amorino, Combustion vs. gasication for a
demonstration CCS (carbon capture and storage) project in Italy: a technoeconomic analysis, Energy 50 (2013) 160169.
[9] Q. Yi, B. Lu, J. Feng, Y. Wu, W. Li, Evaluation of newly designed polygeneration
system with CO2 recycle, Energy Fuel 26 (2012) 14591469.
[10] K.S. Ng, Y. Lopez, G.M. Campbell, J. Sadhukhan, Heat integration and analysis of
decarbonised IGCC sites, Chem. Eng. Res. Des. 88 (2010) 170188.
[11] H.C. Mantripragada, E.S. Rubin, Techno-economic evaluation of coal-to-liquids
(CTL) plants with carbon capture and sequestration, Energy Policy 39 (2011)
28082816.
[12] W. Zhou, B. Zhu, D. Chen, F. Zhao, W. Fei, Technoeconomic assessment of
Chinas indirect coal liquefaction projects with different CO2 capture
alternatives, Energy 36 (2011) 65596566.
[13] H. Han, Economic analysis of producing olen from naphtha, coal and natural
gas, Chem. Techno-Eco. 23 (2005) 1418 (in Chinese).
[14] X. Yang, L. Dong, Technical progress and economic analysis on the direct
production of light olens from syngas, Chem. Ind. Eng. Progr. 31 (2012) 1726
1731 (in Chinese).
[15] T. Ren, M.K. Patel, K. Blok, Steam cracking and methane to olens: energy use,
CO2 emissions and production costs, Energy 33 (2008) 817833.
[16] T. Ren, M.K. Patel, Basic petrochemicals from natural gas, coal and biomass:
energy use and CO2 emissions, Resour. Conserv. Recycl. 53 (2009) 513528.
[17] D. Xiang, L.J. Peng, S. Yang, Y. Qian, A review of oil and coal resource processes
for olens production, Chem. Ind. Eng. Progr. 32 (2013) 959970 (in Chinese).
[18] D. Xiang, Y. Qian, Y. Man, S. Yang, Techno-economic analysis of the coal-toolens process in comparison with the oil-to-olens process, Appl. Energy 113
(2014) 639647, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.apenergy.2013.08.013.
[19] L. Zhou, S. Hu, Y. Li, Q. Zhou, Study on co-feed and co-production system based
on coal and natural gas for producing DME and electricity, Chem. Eng. J. 136
(2008) 3140.
[20] G. Liu, Z. Li, M. Wang, W. Ni, Energy savings by co-production: a methanol/
electricity case study, Appl. Energy 87 (2010) 28542859.
[21] L.G. Zheng, E. Furinsky, Comparison of Shell, Texaco, BGL and KRW gasiers as
part of IGCC plant computer simulations, Energy Convers. Manage. 46 (2005)
17671779.
[22] S. Yang, Q. Yang, H. Li, X. Jin, X. Li, Y. Qian, An integrated framework for
modeling, synthesis, analysis, and optimization of coal gasication-based
energy and chemical processes, Ind. Eng. Chem. Res. 51 (2012) 1576315777.
[23] K. Xie, D. Fang, Methanol Technology, Chem. Ind. Press, China, Beijing, 2010 (in
Chinese).

[24] K.S. Ng, J. Sadhukhan, Process integration and economic analysis of bio-oil
platform for the production of methanol and combined heat and power,
Biomass Bioenergy 35 (2011) 11531169.
[25] Dalian institute of chemical physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences. The typical
operating conditions and product component of methanol to olens, 2011
(assessed 25.08.2013). <http://www.syn.ac.cn/doshow1.php?id=26>. (in
Chinese).
[26] Y. Qian, J. Liu, Z. Huang, A. Kraslawski, J. Cui, Y. Huang, Conceptual design and
system analysis of a poly-generation system for power and olen production
from natural gas, Appl. Energy 86 (2009) 20882095.
[27] Z. Li, D. Zhang, L. Ma, W. Logan, W. Ni, The necessity of and policy suggestions
for implementing a limited number of large scale, fully integrated CCS
demonstrations in China, Energy Policy 39 (2011) 53475355.
[28] L. Zhou, S. Hu, D. Chen, Y. Li, B. Zhu, Y. Jin, Study on systems based on coal and
natural gas for producing dimethyl ether, Ind. Eng. Chem. Res. 48 (2009) 4101
4108.
[29] J. Cheng, C. Li, X. Cheng, The Review on Oil Replacement, China Petrochem.
Press, Beijing, 2009 (in Chinese).
[30] R.T. Dahowski, C.L. Davidson, X.C. Li, N. Wei, A $70/t CO2 greenhouse gas
mitigation backstop for Chinas industrial and electric power sects: insights
from a comprehensive CCS cost curve, Int. J. Greenh. Gas Con. 11 (2012) 7385.
[31] M.S. Peter, K.D. Timmerhaus, Plant Design and Economics for Chemical
Engineers, 5 ed., McGraw Hill, USA, New York, 2003.
[32] M. Orhan, I. Dincer, G. Naterer, Cost analysis of a thermochemical CuCl pilot
plant for nuclear-based hydrogen production, Int. J. Hydrogen Energy 33
(2008) 60066020.
[33] Y. Zhang, T.R. Brown, G. Hu, R.C. Brown, Techno-economic analysis of two biooil upgrading pathways, Chem. Eng. J. 225 (2013) 895904.
[34] K.S. Ng, N. Zhang, J. Sadhukhan, Techno-economic analysis of polygeneration
systems with carbon capture and storage and CO2 reuse, Chem. Eng. J. 219
(2013) 96108.
[35] Chemical engineerings plant cost index, 2012 (assessed 25.08.2013), <http://
www.che.com/business_and_economics/economic_indicators.html>.
[36] J. Zhao, The Economic Data Express of China Petroleum and Chemical Industry,
China Petro. Chem. Ind, Beijing, 2012 (in Chinese).
[37] C.C. Cormos, Integrated assessment of IGCC power generation technology with
carbon capture and storage CCS, Energy 45 (2012) 434445.
[38] O. Lassagne, L. Gosselin, M. Desilets, M. Iliuta, Techno-economic study of CO2
capture for aluminum primary production for different electrolytic cell
ventilation rates, Chem. Eng. J. 230 (2013) 338350.
[39] X. Hu, A. Li, H. Cheng, D. Xin, D. Zhang, B. Zheng, General Principles of the
Comprehensive Energy Consumption Calculation, China Stand. Press, Beijing,
2008 (in Chinese).
[40] China Daily, China starts carbon trading in Shenzhen, 2013 (assessed
25.08.2013),
<http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/bizchina/2013-06/19/
content_16635384.htm>.