Techno-economic analysis of dual methanol and hydrogen production using energy mix systems with CO2 capture

Abstract

The rise in global energy requirements and greenhouse gas emissions demands for the development of cleaner fuels with the reduction in CO2 emissions. Methanol and H2 are considered as cleaner fuels, which are vastly used in my process and product base industries due to excellent combustion properties. This study aims to develop the alternative models using Aspen Plus for dual production of methanol and H2 with the control on greenhouse gas emissions. The base case model represents the coal to methanol and H2 production process, whereas, the alternative model presents the process integration approach to integrate the state-of-art coal gasification and natural gas reforming models to utilize the key technical benefits for each technology. Both the models are techno-economically compared in terms of methanol and H2 production rates, specific energy requirements, carbon conversion, CO2 specific emissions, overall process efficiencies, fuel production costs and project feasibilities. The results showed that the case 2 design offers 4.28% higher process efficiency and 18.3% reduction in specific energy requirements (GJ) for each metric ton (MT) of fuel (methanol and H2) production compared to the base case. Moreover, fuel production cost (€/MT) for the case 2 design is also 13% lower compared to the case 1 design. The comparative analysis also showed that the case 2 design reduces the CO2 specific emissions up to 34.3% compared to the case 1 design. Due to the higher process performance and lower production costs, case 2 design also showed the better project feasibility compared to the base case design.