Sulfur Rich Coal Gasification and Low Impact Methanol Production

Abstract

In recent times, the methanol was employed in numerous innovative applications and is a key compound widely used as a building block or intermediate for producing synthetic hydrocarbons, solvents, energy storage medium and fuel. It is a source of clean, sustainable energy that can be produced from traditional and renewable sources: natural gas, coal, biomass, landfill gas and power plant or industrial emissions. An innovative methanol production process from coal gasification is proposed in this work. A suitable comparison between the traditional coal to methanol process and the novel one is provided and deeply discussed. The most important features, with respect to the traditional ones, are the lower carbon dioxide emissions (about 0.3%) and the higher methanol production (about 0.5%) without any addition of primary sources. Moreover, it is demonstrated that a coal feed/fuel with a high sulfur content allows higher reductions of carbon dioxide emissions. The key idea is to convert hydrogen sulfide and carbon dioxide into syngas (a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide) by means of a regenerative thermal reactor. This is the Acid Gas to Syngas technology, a completely new and effective route of processing acid gases. The main concept is to feed an optimal ratio of hydrogen sulphide and carbon monoxide and to preheat the inlet acid gas before the combustion. The reactor is simulated using a detailed kinetic scheme.

Century of Technology Trends in Methanol Synthesis: Any Need for Kinetics Refitting?

“…Currently, the most popular ones are steam methane reforming (SMR), − autothermal reforming (ATR), ,− partial oxidation (POX), , and coal gasification (CG) . In the past years, due to the large availability of coal mines, many institutions devoted great efforts to making more appealing and environmentally sustainable CG plants mainly driven by the growth of the Chinese internal methanol market. , More recently, different strategies have been proposed to reduce the environmental impact of CG plants for methanol synthesis: the use of biomass from anaerobic digestion as an alternative feedstock ,− or the application of more innovative technologies to obtain syngas while purifying streams from common coal pollutants such as carbon dioxide and H 2 S (AG2S technology − ).…”

Aprioristic Integration of Process Operations and Risk Analysis: Definition of the Weighted F&EI-Based Concept and Application to AG2S Technology

“…Moreover, also the ratio between the components can significantly change. For instance, the H 2 S/CO 2 ratio is different if the stream comes from a refinery framework, from natural gas purification, or from gasification . Other parameters, related to the inlet stream, that could affect the AG2S process are temperature and pressure.…”

“…The technology has recently found application in industrial sectors like refineries 42 and coal-to methanol, 43 which are traditional areas for risk and safety applications. In addition, the chemical equilibrium achieved in the conversion imposes recycles across a dedicated reactor, called the Regenerative Thermal Reactor, to convert the acid gases into valuable products by further increasing the industrial impact.…”

Mitigating Carbon Dioxide Impact of Industrial Steam Methane Reformers by Acid Gas to Syngas Technology: Technical and Environmental Feasibility

“…The global use of natural gas is growing rapidly in the last decade, in particular in the developing country like China [1]. This is primarily attributed to the environmental advantages it enjoys over other fossil fuels such as oil and coal [2]. For this reason, there is worldwide drive towards increasing the utilization of natural gas and towards the related study in order to minimize energy consumption and emissions and increase the profit [3].…”