Producing dimethyl ether from methanol

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Below is some information I collected previously; basically, it’s shared here for everyone’s use. DMA can be produced using natural gas and coal as raw materials. For our country, given the abundant coal reserves, producing DMA from coal is the main method. ●DME is obtained by the dehydration of methanol. Syngas is obtained through coal oxygen blowing gasification, and its main components are CO + H2 ； Synthesis of CO + H2 → CH3OH (methanol) via catalysis ； Dehydration of methanol: 2CH3OH → CH3OCH3 (dimethyl ether). ●Direct conversion of syngas into dimethyl ether is achieved in a slurry bed reactor using the appropriate catalyst. Production of methanol: CO + 2H2 → CH3OH; CO + H2O → CO2 + H2; CO + 3H2 → CH3OH + H2O. Production of dimethyl ether: 2CH3OH → DMA + H2O. According to current manufacturing processes, approximately 2.5 tons of coal are required to produce 1 ton of DME; on the surface it seems that a lot of energy is “lost,” as a significant amount of heat is generated during the reaction ； With optimized utilization, there is still potential for improvement in energy conversion. There are many sources of raw materials for producing DME; coal, natural gas, residue from petroleum refining, petroleum coke, biomass, or other hydrocarbons can all be used as such raw materials. Since syngas is involved in the preparation process, a co-production system centered on a \"one-step\" slurry bed reactor can be adopted, which significantly reduces the initial investment for DME production equipment, the cost per unit of energy, and energy consumption.

Use crude alcohol as the raw material or refined alcohol as the raw material

Using refined alcohol as a raw material certainly allows for the production of DME with higher purity

You can refer to the following posts: http://bbs.hcbbs.com/thread-81758-1-1.html http://bbs.hcbbs.com/thread-78107-1-1.html