Shenhua Bets Big on Coal Chemicals

Shenhua Group Logo

Shenhua Group (parent of China Shenhua Coal and Baotou Coal Chemicals) is investing in new coal gasification technology from Siemens and from Headwaters,  new air separation technology from Air Liquide, and new polypropylene polymerization from Dow which will use their Unipol process, which is primarily gas phase process.

This fits another of my biases which is that when oil becomes prohibitively expensive, people will turn to coal, not to biofuels.

This follows the simple logic, of what did people use before they used petroleum: generally coal; I suppose whale oil will never make a comeback.

It is ironic because coal chemicals today are largely burned for fuel value rather than bothering to purify them for sale as specialty chemicals.