On January 16, good news came from Tianhua Institute of Chemical Machinery & Automation Co., Ltd. (hereafter called Tianhua Institute) that its patent titled “a method for humidifying and drying coking coal in coke oven and equipment therefor” (patent number: ZL2009100216838) was granted the 18th National Outstanding Patent Award by the State Intellectual Property Office.
The patent technology can be utilized in the indispensable working section of many integrated coal processing such as coking, coal gasification, coal liquefaction, coal-to-liquids, coal pyrolysis and high moisture coal-fired power generation. It can be applied in coking industry to cut down coking energy consumption, improve coke quality, and reduce carbon dioxide emissions. It can also be used in the coal gasification industry to control moisture within the required range of gasifier, and reduce gasification energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions. It can be employed in the power sector to significantly reduce coal consumption for power generation by using steam turbine to extract steam for predrying the coal.
Before the patent is implemented, China has not real coal-humidifying equipment, a few coke-making enterprises have traditional hot air rotary and fluidized coke predrying units whose small processing capacity, safety, and technical and economic indicators cannot meet the production requirements.
Through independent R & D, Tianhua Institute applies the existing rotary steam tube drying technology to the coal industry to achieve the localization of the coal-humidifying technology, and break the monopoly of foreign technologies.
The world-leading coal-humidifying technology of Tianhua Institute has been implemented smoothly in many enterprises such as Shanghai Baosteel Group Corporation, resulting in energy and emission reduction, more economic profits for users and production environment improvement. After the patent technology was successfully implemented in Indonesia, power could be generated from high-moisture low-quality drying and upgrading coal, which was praised as the great wisdom of the Chinese people by the Indonesia National Grid Corporation and won the international prestige.
With the largest market share and the lowest integrated operating costs, the patent technology, the first coal-humidifying technology to be applied in the industry, is also the only coal-humidifying technology maintaining continuous and stable operation for more than six years, enjoying the most promotion and the largest application. Among 42 patents related to transformation, optimization and innovation of this patent, 33 patents were authorized. In particular, the coal evaporation water recovering technology developed based on the coal humidifying technology can meet the demands of 60% water consumption for a power plant, which is of great significance to northern and western regions where water shortage has become the bottleneck of development.