Uhde has been awarded a contract by the Chinese company Shanxi Jincheng Anthracite Coal Mining Co. Ltd. for the engineering and supply of a Methanol-To-Gasoline (MTG) plant. The contract was signed on October 16, 2006, in the presence of Ms Christa Thoben, North Rhine-Westphalia's Minister for Economic Affairs and Energy, and Mr Yu Youjun, Governor of the Chinese Province of Shanxi.

The new MTG plant is part of a complex on a pilot-plant scale, which is being constructed at Jincheng, Shanxi Province, some 600 kilometres south-west of Beijing. This complex also includes a fluidised-bed hard-coal gasification plant and a methanol plant. It is planned to produce 100,000 tonnes of gasoline annually from the year 2008.

Under the MTG contract, Uhde is responsible for the licence, the engineering, supply of key process equipment and technical assistance right up to commissioning.

The methanol-to-gasoline (MTG) demonstration plant will be based on a proprietary process licensed from the US enterprise ExxonMobil Research and Engineering Company. The process selectively converts methanol to gasoline.

"In view of the high crude oil prices, coal is gaining ever more significance for the chemical industries in countries with abundant coal reserves, such as China. Uhde has years of experience in the field of coal technology and can provide numerous coal-based processes for the production of synthetic fuels", said Karsten Radtke, Head of the Gas Technologies Division at Uhde, on the occasion of the contract signature.