Siemens is to supply Shenhua, China's largest coal producer, with environmentally friendly technology for converting coal into polypropylene.
This follow-on order is for three "entrained-flow gasifiers" which will be used at a Shenhua plant in Lingwu City, Ningxia province. The plant aims to be the world's biggest facility for converting coal to polypropylene and when completed, in late 2009, it will produce 520,000 tons a year.
China has some of the largest reserves of coal in the world, so it is wishful thinking to expect the country to stop burning coal. While the world waits for China to embrace cleaner coal-based power generation technologies such as IGCC -- see this earlier story -- we can take some comfort from seeing China adopt (relatively) more environmentally friendly methods of producing chemicals.
