Techno-Economic Assessment of Bio-Syngas Production for Methanol Synthesis: A Focus on the Water–Gas Shift and Carbon Capture Sections

Abstract

<jats:p>The biomass-to-methanol process may play an important role in introducing renewables in the industry chain for chemical and fuel production. Gasification is a thermochemical process to produce syngas from biomass, but additional steps are requested to obtain a syngas composition suitable for methanol synthesis. The aim of this work is to perform a computer-aided process simulation to produce methanol starting from a syngas produced by oxygen–steam biomass gasification, whose details are reported in the literature. Syngas from biomass gasification was compressed to 80 bar, which may be considered an optimal pressure for methanol synthesis. The simulation was mainly focused on the water–gas shift/carbon capture sections requested to obtain a syngas with a (H2 – CO2)/(CO + CO2) molar ratio of about 2, which is optimal for methanol synthesis. Both capital and operating costs were calculated as a function of the CO conversion in the water–gas shift (WGS) step and CO2 absorption level in the carbon capture (CC) unit (by Selexol® process). The obtained results show the optimal CO conversion is 40% with CO2 capture from the syngas equal to 95%. The effect of the WGS conversion level on methanol production cost was also assessed. For the optimal case, a methanol production cost equal to 0.540 €/kg was calculated.</jats:p>

Biochemistry of methanol‐dependent acetogenesis in Eubacterium callanderi KIST612

“…H2+CO2+CO (synthesis gas, syngas) is already used in an industrial process as feedstock to produce ethanol, catalyzed by Clostridium autoethanogenum (Norman et al, 2018). Methanol is another interesting feedstock that is currently synthesized at industrial large scale from syngas or methane, but can also be synthesized from coal, biomass or municipal solid waste (www.methanol.org/the-methanolindustry) (Iaquaniello et al, 2017;Giuliano et al, 2020). Although it has been known for a long time that acetogens grow on methanol (Bache and Pfennig, 1981), the analysis of the enzymes Dietrich et al methanol-dependent acetogenesis in E. callanderi page and redox carriers involved as well as the ATP yield is lagging behind (Kremp et al, 2018;Kremp and Müller, 2021).…”

The Effect of Zeolite Features on the Dehydration Reaction of Methanol to Dimethyl Ether: Catalytic Behaviour and Kinetics

“…One possible pathway consists of using CO 2 as a raw material in organic chemical reactions. Different ways for the utilisation of CO 2 as a carbon source have been proposed, such as carbonilation reactions, dry reforming of methane and direct hydrogenation of CO 2 to methanol or dimethyl ether (DME) [1][2][3][4][5][6]. The latter reaction offers an interesting perspective as it can push towards the production of olefins via methanol/DME.…”

Process Simulation and Environmental Aspects of Dimethyl Ether Production from Digestate-Derived Syngas

“…A double-step HT-WGS/LT-WGS was performed, and the H 2 O/CO ratio was varied between 1 and 3 to set the WGS conversion [ 40 ]. The degree of freedom of the Selexol ® process consisted of the syngas pressure and the solvent flowrate [ 41 ]. The DEGP solvent was varied to obtain the optimal CO 2 capture percentage.…”