Carbon Dioxide to Methanol: A Solution to Pollution

• Angelina Rackovic
• Sara Harris
• David Schulz
• Kenil Gandhi

As greenhouse gas emissions increase exponentially, it is the duty of the global community to design and implement solutions addressing this environmental crisis. Carbon dioxide [CO2] is the most abundant greenhouse gas with an estimated total of 49.3 gigatonnes emitted globally in 2016. Roughly 8 percent of CO2 is generated by the cement industry, second only to agriculture. This project will utilize cement plant flue gas as a feedstock to reduce overall CO2 emissions. The CO2 will be converted into methanol, a widely used industrial chemical. Global methanol demand has increased in recent years; however, this increase has been most prominent in China. The Chinese methanol economy is greatly influenced by the demand for methanol in processing electronics, textiles, construction materials, leather and plastics. China has also developed a reliance on methanol as a fuel additive, resulting in demand surges. Our plant will be built in the Guangdong Province of China to capitalize on this market and the Chinese carbon credit system established in 2017. Methanol will be produced in a three-stage process. CO2 will first be sequestered from cement industry flue gas via chemi-absorption. Next, dry methane reformation [DMR] will be utilized to produce syngas, which will be subsequently converted to methanol. With an aspiration to reduce environmental damage, it is our goal to make this process widespread, and commercially attractive.