On December 15, 2017, the Shaanxi Xinghua Group Company, a subsidiary company wholely owned by the Shaanxi Yanchang Petroleum (Group) Corporation Limited, and the Yanchang Zhongke (Dalian) Energy Science and Technology Company Limited jointly signed in Xi’an a “Technical license contract on the 500 kt/a syngas-to-ethanol (DMTE) unit”, symbolizing that the manufacture of ethanol from syngas has been entering a massive commercialization era.

The DMTE technology (by using methanol and syngas to manufacture anhydrous ethanol via carbonylation of dimethyl ether), as a patented technology with completely intellectual property rights, has been jointly developed by the Yanchang Petroleum (Group) Corporation and the Dalian Institue of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences. By January 2017, the 100 kt/a DMTE demonstration unit had been put on stream with all units in the flow diagram being operated successfully. Till now all technical indicators of this unit have reached or exceeded the design norms, and the carbonylation catalyst has been operating for more than 7500 hours. Recently the Shaanxi Xinghua Group has completed the technical innovation of the said unit to reduce the water content in ethanol product to less than 0.5% which can meet the requirement of the National standard GB/T678―2002 on the qualtiy of chemically pure anhydrous ethanol.