From Waste to Chemicals: Catalytic Conversion of Syngas to Methanol

In today’s world, carbon dioxide (CO2), levels in the atmosphere are rising at an average rate of 0.6% annually. The increasing CO2 level in the atmosphere absorbs and radiates heat and results in global warming, which has led to the increase in sea levels and global climate change. The accumulation of CO2 mainly results from the CO2 emissions from the combustion of fossil fuel for energy. To tackle these issues, energy productions must be reformed for generating cleaner energy. CO2 can be used as the raw material to produce methanol through hydrogenation process. Due to these environmental issues, it has become increasingly important to find an alternative option for fossil fuels and their derivatives for environmental benefits. An option to reduce environmental pollution caused by the combustion of fossil fuels is utilizing waste gas as a recyclable way to regenerate fuel, methanol. As such, the goal of this project is to recycle the CO2 for CO production and combine it with H2 as a syngas to produce methanol. This process can effectively help reduce the atmospheric CO2 level and increase methanol production to meet the world demand. Our plant is in Charles City in the northwestern part of Iowa. Valero is a company that mainly works on corn ethanol production, and we will be utilizing Valero’s carbon dioxide emissions from their fermentation step. We plan to utilize 117M lb/year of CO2 from the Valero production, which is about 10% of their total CO2 emission. As a result, we will be producing 57.5M lb/year of methanol (99.96%). As industries transition to processes that have low impact to the environment and low-carbon systems, our process of methanol production will be appealing for energy and tax incentives that help reduce the expense of the project, as our project targets to produce valuable chemicals by consuming CO2.