Conceived as one of the largest ethanol plants in the world, China's Jilin Fuel Ethanol Company Ltd., in the country's northeastern province of Jilin, will begin producing ethanol this month, sources close to the project told EPM in early September. 
 	
 The plant is designed to produce 196 mmgy, but will reportedly produce half that amount (approximately 90 to 100 mmgy) for several months while construction is deferred on the plant's second half until early 2004. 
 	
 The total cost of building the massive facility was not disclosed to EPM but early projections ranged from US$247 million to US$340 million. The construction project was managed by Jilin Tianhe Co. Ltd. as a collaboration between China National Petroleum Corp., the Jilin Grain Group – the largest government-established corn trader in the province – and China Resources Corp. Several international companies with strong ties to U.S. ethanol projects were employeed in the planning, construction and startup of the facility. 

 
 Vogelbusch Handles Process Engineering
 Vogelbusch GmbH, the Austria-based parent company of Vogelbusch U.S.A., served as a provider of basic process engineering for raw material preparation, continuous fermentation, distillation and mole sieve dehydration on the Jilin project, according to Josef Modl, executive vice president of the corporation. 
 	
 "[The scope of our work] included supervising services for detail design done by Shanghai Design Institute and partially by the Design Institute of the Petroleum Industry, along with the startup," Modl told EPM. "Our company also delivered the column trays for all columns in the distillation section."
 	
 Vogelbusch GmbH was chosen for the project in early 2001 and began construction on the project the following fall, nearly two years ago. The plant was not completed in record-breaking time, Modl admitted, but construction stopped for three to four months each year due to bitterly cold winter temperatures in the northern regions of China. 
 	
 Presently Vogelbusch GmbH technologists are on-site to assist in starting up the plant. Modl told EPM he anticipates test runs to be in progress by the second half of this month. The plant could be running at full capacity in its current half-completed state prior to October.
 	
 Designed to produce about 530,000 gallons per day in two parallel lines, only one line has been built. The infrastructure (e.g., grain handling, power station and water) needed for the plant's full-capacity design are already in place and it is anticipated that construction of the second line will begin by the beginning of next year. 
 	
 "That's still to be decided by Jilin Fuel Ethanol Co.," Modl said.
 	
 The plant is sited on 500-plus acres of land and is designed to "double or triple" its production capacity as China gradually mandates ethanol use nationwide. 
 

 Multiple Coproducts 
 Raw material corn, wet-milled into starch slurry, is being used as the plant's feedstock. The facility utilizes full, continuous liquefaction with partial sachrification, continuous fermentation, distillation with two mash columns and two rectification columns, plus one aldehyde column, Modl told EPM. 
 	
 "[The design] reduces the steam consumption in distillation significantly as the mole sieve is also energy integrated," Modl said. "The DDGS drying system uses steam-heated tube dryers, and vapors are used for heating the evaporation station with no live steam required."
 	
 The plant will produce a range of ethanol-related products including fuel ethanol, beverage ethanol and "bio-fertilizer."
 
 The Project 'Cannot Fail'
 Genencor International, a major supplier of enzymes to the U.S. ethanol industry, is the startup enzyme supplier and technical advisor for enzyme use on the Jilin project. 
 	
 "The Chinese government is fully supporting this project, so it cannot fail," said George Virgil, a Genencor International Inc. account manager on the project. "The site is in the middle of corn country, not unlike Iowa, except there is a rim of low mountains around the area." 
 	
 Currently, production and use of ethanol is encouraged by the Chinese government, which hopes the renewable fuel additive will help promote the country's energy, environmental protection and agricultural industries. The Jilin provincial government announced in July that the entire province will move to ethanol-based fuels for their 90 and 93 octane fuels. The province, with a population of 28 million people, must make the switch by Oct. 18. 
 	
 Chinese officials are worried that China's known oil and gas reserves are running out. Currently, domestic coal and hydropower are widely used for electricity generation. China produces about 70 percent of its national crude oil needs, but still imports another 70 million metric tons, mainly from the Middle East. 

 	
 Corn warehouses in China are reportedly "bulging with stocks" after several years of good corn crops. Prices have plunged to 25-year lows as a result. 
 	
 The region is expecting another healthy corn crop this year, but the Jilin plant will eat up 900,000 tons of it, and perhaps 1.8 million next year. 
 	
 "[The crop looked] pretty good to me on my travels to and from the plant," Virgil said. "It should be a good harvest for them."
 	
 When at full capacity (196 mmgy) the project is expected to employ about 800 people – times the number of workers that would be employed at a plant of equal size in the United States. More new ethanol plants will mean hundreds, perhaps thousands, of new jobs in China.
 	
 Feasibility studies are being conducted on ethanol projects in the Anhui and Guangxi provinces, the latter of which is considering producing ethanol from cassava. EP

Jilin Fuel Ethanol Company Ltd. is designed to produce 196 mmgy, but will run at half capacity in 2003 as the facility's second half is completed.

Half of China's Mega-Plant On Line

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Upcoming Events

2024 International Fuel Ethanol Workshop & Expo

Biodiesel Summit: Sustainable Aviation Fuel & Renewable Diesel

Carbon Capture & Storage Summit

North American SAF Conference & Expo

2025 International Biomass Conference & Expo

Half of China's Mega-Plant On Line