Development of an Efficient Methanol Production Process for Direct CO2 Hydrogenation over a Cu/ZnO/Al2O3 Catalyst

Abstract

Carbon capture and utilization as a raw material for methanol production are options for addressing energy problems and global warming. However, the commercial methanol synthesis catalyst offers a poor efficiency in CO 2 feedstock because of a low conversion of CO 2 and its deactivation resulting from high water production during the process. To overcome these barriers, an efficient process consisting of three stage heat exchanger reactors was proposed for CO 2 hydrogenation. The catalyst volume in the conventional methanol reactor (CR) is divided into three sections to load reactors. The product stream of each reactor is conveyed to a flash drum to remove methanol and water from the unreacted gases (H 2 , CO and CO 2 ). Then, the gaseous stream enters the top of the next reactor as the inlet feed. This novel configuration increases CO 2 conversion almost twice compared to one stage reactor. Also to reduce water production, a water permselective membrane was assisted in each reactor to remove water from the reaction side. The proposed process was compared with one stage reactor and CR from coal and natural gas. Methanol is produced 288, 305, 586 and 569 ton/day in CR, one-stage, three-stage and three-stage membrane reactors (MR), respectively. Although methanol production rate in three-stage MR is a bit lower than three stage reactors, the produced water, as the cause of catalyst poisoning, is notably reduced in this configuration. Results show that the proposed process is a strongly feasible way to produce methanol that can competitive with a traditional synthesis process.

Development of Two Novel Processes for Hydrogenation of CO2 to Methanol over Cu/ZnO/Al2O3 Catalyst to Improve the Performance of Conventional Dual Type Methanol Synthesis Reactor

“…Conversion of syngas to methanol consists of three reactions including conversion of CO 2 and CO to methanol and reverse water gas shift reaction (RWGS). These three reactions are presented as follows [39] CO…”

“…Gas condensation including water and methanol deactivates the Cu/ZnO/Al 2 O 3 catalyst and decreases the efficiency of the methanol synthesis reaction [10,37]. Because water reduces active sites of this catalyst and causes catalyst deactivation [17,[37][38][39][40]. Moreover, water is adsorbed by alumina which is the hydrophilic component of the reaction catalyst and it has negative effect on catalyst activity.…”

“…Moreover, water is adsorbed by alumina which is the hydrophilic component of the reaction catalyst and it has negative effect on catalyst activity. [39]. So, it can impose considerable financial burden on petrochemical complexes.…”

Methanol Production via CO2 Hydrogenation: Sensitivity Analysis and Simulation—Based Optimization

“…Recently, the production of methanol from direct CO 2 hydrogenation is of interest (Samimi et al, 2017;Marlin et al, 2018). The process has potential to mitigate the CO 2 emission to the atmosphere.…”

Active and Stable Methane Oxidation Nano-Catalyst with Highly-Ionized Palladium Species Prepared by Solution Combustion Synthesis

“…It is widely used in various applications such as electrical power generation and other heating applications. Unfortunately, the release of unburnt methane into the atmosphere, particularly from vehicles which are fueled with natural gas, is a serious environmental issue since it is a strong greenhouse gas with an environmental negative effect twenty times higher than that of carbon dioxide [2,3]. The conventional thermal combustion of methane not only requires very high temperatures (up to 1600 • C) but also results in production of NO x as by-products.…”