Abstract
Methanol is currently considered one of the most useful chemical products and is a promising building block for obtaining more complex chemical compounds, such as acetic acid, methyl tertiary butyl ether, dimethyl ether, methylamine, etc. Methanol is the simplest alcohol, appearing as a colorless liquid and with a distinctive smell, and can be produced by converting CO2 and H2, with the further benefit of significantly reducing CO2 emissions in the atmosphere. Indeed, methanol synthesis currently represents the second largest source of hydrogen consumption after ammonia production. Furthermore, a wide range of literature is focused on methanol utilization as a convenient energy carrier for hydrogen production via steam and autothermal reforming, partial oxidation, methanol decomposition, or methanol–water electrolysis reactions. Last but not least, methanol supply for direct methanol fuel cells is a well-established technology for power production. The aim of this work is to propose an overview on the commonly used feedstocks (natural gas, CO2, or char/biomass) and methanol production processes (from BASF—Badische Anilin und Soda Fabrik, to ICI—Imperial Chemical Industries process), as well as on membrane reactor technology utilization for generating high grade hydrogen from the catalytic conversion of methanol, reviewing the most updated state of the art in this field.
Highlights
In the last century, fossil fuels represented the main source of energy production
Liguori et al [92] used a supported Pd/PSS membrane reactor (MR) packed with a CuO/ZnO/Al2 O3 catalyst; the composite membrane was prepared by electroless plating deposition (ELP), showing an average metallic layer of around 7 μm
The supported carbon membrane was housed in an MR for an methanol steam reforming (MSR) reaction and methanol conversion of >50% was obtained at 250 ◦ C and 2 bar, while recovering a hydrogen stream with a purity of
Summary
Fossil fuels represented the main source of energy production. The key issues for wide hydrogen utilization as a new energy carrier are represented by its purification costs and by the difficulties linked to the infrastructure for its storage and transportation. By Itcontrast, methanol is useful stored transported and be used as aasconvenient hydrogen for producing andinsynthetic hydrocarbons, and single-cell carrier. It is intermediates useful the chemical industry as a including solvent andpolymers as a C1 building block for proteins [2,3]. Methanol can with conventional petrol, without requiring any currently use M85 fuel,towhich represents a mixture containing.
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