On August 20, the China Methanol Industry Conference 2020 was held in Ordos city, Inner Mongolia. In his work report delivered at the conference, Gu Zongqin, President of China Nitrogen Fertilizer Industry Association, pointed out that although our industry is currently facing many difficulties, risks and challenges, we need to cultivate new opportunities in the crisis and open new ones in the midst of changes. China's economy has great potential, strong resilience, large room for maneuver and many policy tools. These four basic characteristics and huge advantages have been fully demonstrated and demonstrated in the fight against the epidemic. With the gradual improvement of the epidemic prevention situation, China's economic indicators have been marginal improvement, the economic recovery process has also appeared a sign of acceleration. Economic recovery is good for China's methanol industry. Analyzing the situation, the next step of work focuses on five aspects.
First, actively maintain the healthy and stable operation of the market. Gu Zongqin said that under the current market price level, China's methanol production enterprises run under great pressure, poor efficiency. China Nitrogen Fertilizer Industry Association has received many letters from enterprises about the situation. China Nitrogen Fertilizer Industry Association has sent letters to the ministry of Commerce, The National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and other relevant national ministries and commissions to reflect the demands of enterprises. It mainly reflects three aspects of the problem: one is about anti-dumping issues; Second, to strive for preferential policies; Third, methanol futures market. These three questions have not been interrupted until now. In the first half of this year, the methanol market was further depressed, and the association received letters from ten key enterprises. According to the requirements of enterprises, the association considers, on the one hand, to improve the external environment; On the other hand, measures should also be taken within the industry. Therefore, I learned from the practices of other industries and issued a proposal to the whole industry, calling on enterprises to adjust the production load according to the device situation and market demand, carry out reasonable rotation overhaul, reduce the supply of methanol commodities, stabilize the economic operation of the industry, and alleviate the contradiction between supply and demand. The association also sent a letter to the Zhengzhou Commodity Exchange, drawing attention to the operation of methanol futures, so as to give full play to the positive role of futures, options and other financial derivatives and promote the positive interaction between the spot market and the futures market. The leaders of Zheng Shang Institute also attended the meeting in person to listen to the opinions of enterprises. In the next step, we plan to hold a symposium with relevant departments of the Ministry of Commerce for methanol dealers at home and abroad to discuss how to regulate the domestic methanol market.
Second, we will adopt multiple measures to boost domestic demand. Gu Zongqin pointed out that to expand demand, we must take meeting domestic demand as the starting point and goal of development. During the epidemic period, some methanol to olefin enterprises made emergency production of medical polypropylene materials is a breakthrough attempt. In the future, while further consolidating the sales of the traditional industrial chain, we should make great efforts to expand and extend the industrial chain and explore new markets.
Through the analysis of the existing market, we believe that methanol fuel will be a good growth field at present. After several years of market development, the energy application field of methanol is expanding rapidly, showing good prospects in both power combustion and thermal fuel.
In dynamic burning methanol as vehicle transportation fuel, Denmark, the UK and Iceland in Europe and other countries has been applied, in our country in 2012-2017 completed the pilot, "" four provinces and one city began in 2019 in key provinces and cities to speed up the application promotion, currently methanol in guizhou nearly ten thousand cars, xi 'an methanol automobile number has reached more than 8000 units. As a Marine fuel, methanol has become an important way to replace shipping fuel oil in response to the IMO sulphur restriction. Methanex has made great progress in the application of dual-fuel methanol transport ship, which can use methanol fuel and traditional Marine fuel simultaneously.
In terms of thermal combustion, methanol is emerging as industrial boiler fuel, industrial furnace fuel, clean heating fuel, stove fuel and other application markets. In terms of industrial boiler fuel, the number of industrial boilers in China is more than 600,000 units, and the annual coal consumption is about 700 million tons. By the end of 2018, some 420,000 small and medium-sized boilers under 35 tons/hour will be banned from using coal. If calculated as 5% "coal-to-alcohol" methanol fuel, about 24 million tons of methanol boiler fuel market will be formed. In terms of fuel for industrial furnaces, in 2019, four ministries and commissions jointly issued the Comprehensive Air Pollution Control Plan for Industrial kilns, requiring that "industrial kilns fueled by coal, petroleum coke, residual oil and heavy oil should be replaced by clean and low-carbon energy and waste heat from factories and power plants". At present, methanol furnace fuel has been gradually applied to boiler cleaning and renovation, heating, heating integrated system and distributed application system, ceramic firing, drying processing, metal heat treatment, thermal processing, non-ferrous metal smelting processing and other industries. In terms of clean heating fuels, the total heating area of urban and rural buildings in northern China is about 20.6 billion square meters. We are speeding up the process of replacing coal with natural gas, coal with electricity, and coal with alcohol. According to incomplete statistics, there were 5,816 methanol heating furnaces used in China in 2016, about 30,000 in 2017, and over 50,000 in 2018, showing a rapid growth. In terms of methanol kitchen, because methanol kitchen adopts unique gasification structure design, gasification combustion is more sufficient, energy saving effect is more significant, applicable to hotels, hotels, schools, factories, institutions and other units canteen field, has been promoted and applied in Shanxi, Shaanxi, Henan, Anhui and Guizhou provinces.
Third, we will continue to promote innovation. Gu stressed that science and technology are the primary productive forces, the urgent requirement and important support for promoting high-quality economic and social development and replacing old drivers of growth with new ones. First, we need to work hard in key areas and links to accelerate breakthroughs in core technologies, raw materials and equipment manufacturing. For example, we should improve the efficiency of raw materials, develop gasifier capable of burning low-quality coal, local coal and high-sulfur coal, develop heat recovery system of total waste boiler, and further improve the efficiency of purification and synthesis. Secondly, to the management innovation to benefit, and strive to improve the level of management. Management innovation is the focus and breakthrough of accelerating development, saving cost and increasing efficiency, and is a key link of comprehensive innovation. As a typical coal-to-olefin enterprise, China Coal Shaanxi Yulin Energy & Chemical Co., Ltd. has done a lot of productive work in this field. We also invited them to speak at this meeting, hoping that they can bring us new inspirations. Third, we should accelerate the penetration and integration of new-generation information technology and industry, and actively promote the digital transformation of the industry. New technologies and applications such as 5G and the industrial Internet will be utilized to transform traditional industries in an all-round, all-round and full-chain way, and promote the deep integration of the Internet, big data, artificial intelligence and the real economy. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has carried out pilot demonstration of synthetic ammonia in Cnooc Hainan Company and Xinlianxin Company. After the successful pilot demonstration, the methanol industry can follow the example.
Fourth, safety and environmental protection should be placed in a prominent position. Gu Zongqin pointed out that in recent years, the Party Central Committee and the State Council have attached great importance to safety and environmental protection work, and put forward more and more high requirements, and the state departments concerned have also increased supervision of safety and environmental protection. In order to prevent and contain the occurrence of serious and major accidents, we need to firmly establish the awareness of safety precaution and fully understand the importance of green development. For the safety and environmental protection of the device, the enterprise should make frequent diagnosis, exchange and communicate more among the industry, learn from the successful practices of other units, increase investment, not only to solve the historical debt, but also to meet the requirements of new regulations, and constantly use mature advanced technology to transform the existing device. At the same time, we should pay attention to the production management, not relax the safety and environmental protection problems for a moment, solve the problems in time, do not let the device leave any hidden trouble, not because of immediate economic benefits and make the device "operation with disease".
Fifth, we need to control production capacity and optimize the structure. According to Gu Zongqin, although China is the largest methanol country in the world, the fact that it is big but not strong has not changed, and the era of winning by quantity has ended. On the existing basis of the industry, we should properly handle the relationship between increment and inventory, further optimize the industrial structure, improve the balance of supply and demand, and enhance core competitiveness. Methanol projects tend to have high investment, high energy consumption, and great influence on the market and industry. In terms of project planning and construction, caution should be taken, impulse should be suppressed, resources, environment, market and other factors should be fully considered, and blind following should be avoided. As for the existing production capacity, it is necessary to continue to promote the process of cutting production capacity of backward equipment, increase the intensity of technological transformation, optimize and upgrade the technical level of existing equipment, optimize the industrial structure, and do everything possible to reduce production costs and improve the economic benefits of enterprises.
Gu Zongqin pointed out that "much starker choices-and graver consequences-in" immediately in the past, "difference" is coming, look "much starker choices-and graver consequences-in", methanol industry has made great progress, looking forward to the "difference", our whole industry facing a very difficult task, not only to achieve the transformation and upgrading of traditional industries, but also out of a traditional industry is not the traditional development new way.
