Design and Performance Comparison of Methanol Production Processes with Carbon Dioxide Utilization

Yih-Hang Chen,Ya-Chien Chen,Hsuan Chang,David Shan-Hill Wong,Chao-Min Chang

doi:10.3390/en12224322

Yih-Hang Chen, Ya-Chien Chen + Show 3 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/en12224322

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Journal: Energies	Publication Date: Nov 13, 2019
Citations: 8	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: Tamkang University, National Tsing Hua University

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Carbon dioxide recycling is one of the possible contributions to CO2 mitigation and provides an opportunity to use a low-cost carbon source. Methanol is a commodity chemical that serves as an important basic chemical and energy feedstock with growing demand. For each of the four types of industrial methanol production processes from natural gas (methane), i.e., steam reforming (SR), autothermal reforming (ATR), combined reforming (CR), and two-step reforming (TSR), CO2 utilization cases of (A) no utilization, (B) as reforming step feedstock, and (C) as methanol synthesis step feedstock were designed based on common industrial operation conditions and analyzed for energy consumption, exergy loss (EXloss), net CO2 reduction (NCR) and internal rate of return (IRR). The utilization of CO2 can reduce energy consumption. The processes with the lowest and the highest EXloss are SR and ATR, respectively. All SR processes give negative NCR. All the B-type processes are positive in NCR except B-SR. The highest NCR is obtained from the B-ATR process with a value of 0.23 kg CO2/kg methanol. All the processes are profitable with positive IRR results and the highest IRR of 41% can be obtained from B-ATR. The utilization of CO2 in the industrial methanol process can realize substantial carbon reduction and is beneficial to process economics.

Highlights

To meet the Paris 1.5 ◦ C target, 3.75 gigatons per year of concentrated CO2 will be generated from carbon capture facilities [1]
Some identified chemicals which can be produced from CO2 with existing mature or emerging technologies including urea, methanol, salicylic acid, formaldehyde, formic acid, cyclic carbonates, ethylene carbonates, di-methyl carbonate [5]
The reforming reactions are endothermic while the methanol synthesis reaction is exothermic

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Introduction

To meet the Paris 1.5 ◦ C target, 3.75 gigatons per year of concentrated CO2 will be generated from carbon capture facilities [1]. There are many articles on the reaction pathways or techno-economic assessment of large-scale technologies for the conversion of CO2 into chemicals and fuels [2,3,4,5]. Some identified chemicals which can be produced from CO2 with existing mature or emerging technologies including urea, methanol, salicylic acid, formaldehyde, formic acid, cyclic carbonates, ethylene carbonates, di-methyl carbonate [5]. Among these chemicals, methanol is the feedstock for the production of formaldehyde, methyl tertiary-butyl ether and acetic acid. The methanol-to-olefins and methanol-to-propylene processes allow for the production of feedstock for consumer plastics

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