Interim results achieved in the pilot-scale up experiment of methanol production via carbon dioxide hydrogenation at Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics
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Interim results achieved in the pilot-scale test of methanol production via carbon dioxide hydrogenation at Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics Author/Source: Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics Date: 2019-07-01 Clicks: 39 Recently, the Research Center for Catalysis and New Materials at Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, in collaboration with CNPC, has made interim progress in the research on methanol production from carbon dioxide (CO2) through hydrogenation: the pilot-scale unit was successfully operated for the first time at CNPC’s Daqing Chemical Engineering Research Center, achieving a CO2 conversion rate of 20% on a one-way basis, a methanol selectivity of 70% (with a purity of methanol in the organic liquid product exceeding 99.9%), and stable operation was achieved. The pilot-scale tests also involved verifying the patterns observed in the lab-scale tests, examining the scaling effects, optimizing process conditions, and collecting basic data. In addition, the development of the technical process package for 10,000-ton-scale plants is also carried out simultaneously on this basis. Using nuclear energy or renewable energy to electrolyze water to produce hydrogen, and then reacting it with captured CO2 to synthesize methanol, enables the conversion and storage of electrical energy into chemical energy. Building on previous research, the research team developed a new catalyst for the hydrogenation of CO2 to methanol. On this basis, the CO2 hydrogenation process was fully designed as an independent chemical unit, resulting in a modular CO2 hydrogenation plant for the entire process, which can be flexibly applied to distributed energy networks. The successful commissioning of this pilot plant represents a forward-looking exploration and attempt by our institute and CNPC in response to the future trends in new energy development, and it will provide a technical demonstration for the utilization of CO2 resources. The above work was funded by relevant projects such as the **Key R&D Program** of the Ministry of Science and Technology, as well as the support provided by Dalian Rick Technology Co., Ltd. in catalyst preparation.
If there are affordable sources of hydrogen and carbon dioxide, the profits from this project would be immeasurable···
Cheap carbon dioxide is easy to find – there are so many chimneys from power plants, so much flue gas from heating furnaces, and exhaust gases from lime kilns. Producing cheap hydrogen is extremely difficult; firstly, it’s not possible to produce hydrogen from coal, as that would result in the emission of large amounts of carbon dioxide. Electrolysis – industrial electricity remains expensive, and photovoltaic and wind power are not cheap either ； Reforming hydrogen – refineries don’t have enough of it ； …………There is a large amount of hydrogen on the Sun, but the cost of laying pipelines is somewhat high ； Finally, there’s the hydrogen in the cylinders at the gas plant, but I don’t know where this hydrogen comes from.
Is this technology reliable? Will it work?
Congratulations on developing the full-process skid-mounted CO2 hydrogenation unit; it’s quite interesting. Perhaps in the future, the electricity from wind power can be converted into methanol on-site and then transported away.