Demonstration of DME clean fuel and the Status of DME Business

In Korea, DME business has brought many technological advances over the past 20 years through technology development and demonstration projects. In this paper, we aim to describe DME in Korean SMEs(Small and Medium-sized Enterprises) as a project to reduce fine dust and replace diesel fuel. And we also introduce the effort to supply DME from SMEs for the next 5 years in the domestic small market scale. In this issue, we will discuss the development of small-scale DME plants from landfill gas and methanol, and mention the business opportunities to produce and distribute DME. Bio Friends Inc. has introduced a process for producing DME from landfill gas (LFG), a methane resource in China. For the construction of small scale (2-50 thousand tons) DME plant and the project to supply DME, we had been going to visit the landfill sites of Tieling City and Harbin City in China to promote business description and investment since Jan. 2017. In Korea, Daeheung Industry has continued to produce DME from methanol, and plans to expand DME plant to commercial production in 2018. Daeheung Industry and Bio fiends Inc. are planning to produce prototype DME buses and generators in order to carry out empirical studies to supply DME fuel to Ulsan City with the support of Ulsan City, Ulsan TP, Ulsan University and KIER. Organized by Unisys International, Bio Friends Inc. participated in the project to supply DME for rural fuels at the Gwangju Smart Farm. The project started at the end of 2016 and is scheduled to be distributed to the facility farms in Gongju City and Jinju City. Also, DME is being considered to be supplied to the farmers in Jeju Island. Korea s DME partners are looking forward to active demonstration and plant construction projects for small and medium-sized enterprises to supply 20,000 tons of DME by 2020, and hope to make many investments abroad as well.