Retrofit application of traditional petroleum chemical technologies to coal chemical industry for sustainable energy-efficiency production

Abstract Coal Chemical Industry (CCI) have more abundant resources potential on fossil fuel under the background of the exhaustion of world petroleum resource, but still need to overcome the operational problems and environmental issues. Petroleum Chemical Industry (PCI) technology, related CCI is viewed as a more mature technology, which could often be applied in CCI processes. This paper made a brief contrast of existing coal and petroleum chemical technologies, gave new insights on the application of PCI technologies in CCI, and provided a case about the recovery and separation of coal pyrolysis products using a process that has a similar structure compare with FCC fractionator. The results showed that the integration process gives a 41.27% reduction in total annual cost with total product yield almost unchanged, and achieves a total economic cost with a positive value of 15.74 × 105 $/y by saturated steam generation. The wastewater producing amount is decreased by 99.71% in Type I, and the product loss is also decreased by 99.38%. The discussed case proves the feasibility and significance of novel technology development of CCI based on the PCI technology and will lead to a wealth of research topics of the CCI field.