Tianguan Group: Perfect Industrial Chain of the Leading Alcohol Producer     

Henan Tianguan Group Co., Ltd. (Tianguan Group), headquartered in Nanyang, Henan province in central China, mainly manufactures alcohol, fuel alcohol, glacial acetic acid and acetates, with a total of over 40 varieties. Their total output exceeds 500 000 tons a year. The company had an unaudited asset value of RMB3.46 billion and achieved a sales revenue of RMB3.1 billion by the end of 2007, an increase of 551.85% and 1174.69% respectively compared with the end of 1999. The average annual growth in these eight years was 68.98% for assets and 146.84% for revenues. The company accomplished before-tax profits of nearly RMB120 million in 2007.
   Tianguan Group completed and put on stream a 200 000 t/a fuel alcohol production line in April 2001. It started the construction of a 300 000 t/a fuel alcohol production line in 2002 and completed it in 2005. (CCR2005, No. 15) The company owns a fuel alcohol capacity of 500 000 t/a today, the biggest in China. It has produced 1.4 million tons of fuel alcohol accumulatively and has supplied regions including Henan, Hubei and Hebei provinces since 2001. Tianguan Group is appointed by the Central Government to be one of the four licensed enterprises for the production of fuel alcohol. Fuel alcohol produced by the company in 2007 enjoyed a government subsidy of RMB2 251 per ton. (CCR2008, No. 2) Although the alcohol operation suffers loss due to high cost and complicated production process and the company makes only a thin profit by relying on government subsidies, the company is still trying its best to make full use of everything and turn wastes into valuables.

Developing the alcohol business with green principles   

The clean alcohol production process that Tianguan Group owns is suitable to various raw materials and has become an example of clean production throughout the alcohol sector. During 2002-2005 the company mainly used wheat that had been stored for many years as raw material to produce alcohol. In later years the company made a large-scale production of alcohol using non-grain crops as raw materials as advocated by the state. The company modified the wheat-based alcohol process and formed a capacity of 200 000 t/a cassava-based fuel alcohol capacity.
   The 10 000 t/a fiber alcohol commercialization demonstration project that Tianguan Group constructed with its own intellectual property rights has also become the biggest fiber alcohol production line in China. The project uses scrap stalk as raw material to produce alcohol. Relative research was launched in 1997 and production was started in 2007 and qualified product was produced in the same year.
   To realize the enterprise concept of green, cyclic and sustainable development, Tianguan Group has conducted follow-up research on improving the process technology for fiber alcohol. It plans to construct a fiber alcohol standard modular demonstration plant in Nanyang municipality and form a basic resource sector with considerable scale before 2020.
   Waste liquid generated in the fuel alcohol production contains great quantities of organics and its direct discharge would cause pollution. Tianguan Group has used the filtered liquid to produce methane. The output of methane has reached 18 million m3 a year.

Technical advantages of the company   

Tianguan Group has developed a "fuel alcohol cyclic economy model". In the cyclic economy model, the treatment and recycling of various scraps is merged with the industrial chain to form a total cycle. A benign cycle of "resource-product-renewed resource" advocated in cyclic economy is achieved.
    Through many years of joint research and development with institutions of higher learning, Tianguan Group has successfully turned wastes into valuables. Carbon dioxide waste gas generated in fuel alcohol production is used to produce fully-degradable plastics categorized as PPC (chlorinated polypropylene) plastics at the world leading level. Such plastics can be used in disposable medical and food packaging materials, fully-degradable foam packaging materials and disposable tableware. The company has already completed a 5 000 t/a commercial unit and is expanding and disseminating the technology.
    Tianguan Group has researched "key technologies for the bio-diesel clean production" in collaboration with Zhengzhou University and Tsinghua University and completed the 200 t/a pilot test. Construction on the 30 000 t/a bio-diesel project with an investment of RMB30 million was started in July 2007 (CCR2007 No. 20) and was already completed in June 2008 and wet commissioning is underway.