At present, my country has become the world's largest ethylene glycol consumer market. The consumption of ethylene glycol in my country is mainly concentrated in the polyester field (92%), and the remaining 8% is used in the field of antifreeze and unsaturated resin.
The domestic energy structure of "rich coal, less gas and lean oil" on the one hand makes the domestic ethylene glycol production capacity increase limited, on the other hand, it greatly promotes my country's enthusiasm for research and development of coal-to-glycol technology and construction projects.
At present, coal-based ethylene glycol is emerging, and the market impact cannot be underestimated. As a new coal chemical project, coal-to-ethylene glycol has been rapidly developed during the Twelfth Five-Year Plan period. At present, several large-scale 200,000-ton-level plants have been put into demonstration operation. The product quality is better than the current petroleum-based national standards. The industry is fully recognized, the market potential is huge, and the prospects are promising. At present, several coal-to-ethylene glycol production lines have been built in areas such as Liaoning and Henan with a total capacity of more than 1 million tons. It is worth mentioning that the biggest market restriction factor of coal-to-ethylene glycol-the cost bottleneck is gradually being broken. This is due to the fact that domestic coal prices have been in the low range in the past 10 years, and the supporting role of raw materials is obvious; on the other hand, because of the continuous use of new technologies, new processes, and new equipment, the efficiency of the installation has gradually improved.