Ethanol, one of the most important renewable fuels, can be used as fuel additive, hydrogen carrier, chemical feedstock, and so on, and its production has triggered wide research interest. Currently ethanol is mainly produced by the fermentation of sugars and corns.However, Limited production capacity of ethanol by the fermentation of biomass materials cannot meet large-scale demand for ethanol in various fields. The synthesis of ethanol by Dimethyl ether (DME) carbonylation to methyl acetate (MAc) is a potential way from synthesis gas (CO + H₂, syngas) which can be derived readily from natural gas, coal and biomass.

DME carbonylation reaction over zeolite catalyst is a rather important and interesting reaction in the both fields of science and industry. The Dalian Institute of ChemicalPhysics (DICP), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) has been workingon development of improvedzeolite catalyst for DME carbonylation since 1996. Some of the zeolite catalysts synthesized in DICP have proven to be more active and stable than zeolite catalysts employed in the previous studies. Based on these findings, DICP has developed a green route for ethanol synthesis by DME carbonylation followed by methyl acetate hydrogenation, resulting in successful construction and operation of the world’s first coal toethanol plant in 2017.

The plant was created by DICP and Shaanxi Yanchang Petroleum Group, and put into production in January 11, 2017 with capacity of 100,000 metric tons of anhydrous ethanol per year. The conversion of DME was about 50% and the selectivity of ethanol wasmore than 99.5%. Based on this plant, a plant with capacity of 500,000 metric tons per year is being built and will be put into operation in 2022. Up to now, 14 technology license contracts have been signed for this technology, with a cumulative capacity of 4.55 million tons.