Abstract
The present study investigated the thermodynamic and economic feasibility of methanol synthesis reactions from CO2 and H2. Three reactions, namely CO2 hydrogenation to methanol, reverse-water-gas-shift (RWGS) and methanol decomposition reaction, were considered. The effect of temperature, pressure and H2/CO2 mole ratio on CO2 conversion and methanol selectivity was examined explicitly. The simulation results were compared with experimental data. A conceptual process design for methanol synthesis from CO2 was developed using an Aspen Plus process simulator. At 250 °C and 50 bar, the analysis shows about 73% CO2 conversion and 99.7% CH3OH selectivity for a recycling ratio of 0.9. A techno-economic feasibility study was performed to understand the influence of feed and product cost, recycling ratio and plant throughput, on plant profit margins. The study revealed that the proposed process might be economically viable if the H2 price is lower than 1,500 $/ton and/or with a methanol production capacity of more than 250 tons/day.
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Abbreviations
- ASPEN PEA:
-
Aspen process economic analyzer
- DPBP:
-
discounted payback period
- d:
-
discount rate
- CEPCI:
-
chemical engineering plant cost index
- CF:
-
cash flow
- Cnew :
-
capacity of new equipment
- C ref :
-
capacity of reference equipment
- DC:
-
direct cost
- DCFA:
-
discounted cash flow analysis
- FCI:
-
fixed capital investment
- IC:
-
indirect cost
- IRR:
-
internal rate of return
- NPV:
-
net present value
- PBP:
-
payback period
- Pr :
-
reaction pressure
- Pnew :
-
purchased cost of new equipment
- P ref :
-
purchased cost of reference equipment
- R:
-
recycling ratio
- REquil:
-
equilibrium reactor model
- RF:
-
ratio factor
- RWGS:
-
reverse-water-gas-shift
- SMeOH :
-
methanol selectivity
- TCI:
-
total capital investment
- TPC:
-
total product cost
- TPP:
-
total plant profit
- TR :
-
reaction temperature
- WCI:
-
working capital investment
- WGS:
-
water-gas-shift
- \(\rm{X}{CO{2}}\) :
-
CO2 conversion
- ΔG:
-
Gibbs free energy change
- ΔH:
-
enthalpy change
- ΔS:
-
entropy change
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Acknowledgements
The authors express their gratitude to BITS Pilani Hyderabad Campus for providing the necessary support and facilities for the present study.
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Author Contributions
Suresh Kanuri: Conceptualization, Investigation, Data generation, Writing-original draft; Jha Deeptank Vinodkumar: Data generation; Sounak Roy: Administration, Data validation; Chanchal Chakraborty: Administration, Data validation; Santanu Prasad Dutta: Data validation; Satyapaul A. Singh: Conceptualization, Result validation, Supervision. Methodology; Srikanta Dinda: Conceptualization, Supervision, Writing and editing. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this manuscript.
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Kanuri, S., Vinodkumar, J.D., Datta, S.P. et al. Methanol synthesis from CO2 via hydrogenation route: Thermodynamics and process development with techno-economic feasibility analysis. Korean J. Chem. Eng. 40, 810–823 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11814-022-1302-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11814-022-1302-1