【Haichuan Explores the World】Producing gasoline from carbon dioxide and hydrogen! !

According to China News Service, on March 4, 2022, the world’s first pilot-scale plant for producing gasoline via the hydrogenation of carbon dioxide at a rate of 1,000 tons per year, developed jointly by the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics under the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Zhuhai Fuhuan Energy Technology Co., Ltd., was successfully put into operation in the Zoucheng Industrial Park in Shandong Province. This plant has been able to produce clean gasoline that meets the National VI standards.

As early as 2017, the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics began conducting research. In 2017, a research team composed of Sun Jian, Ge Qingjie, Wei Jian, and others from the Research Group on Small Molecules for Carbon Resources and Hydrogen Energy Utilization at the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics developed a technology for producing gasoline from carbon dioxide through hydrogenation. This achievement was published in Nature Communications and was described as a \"breakthrough in the field of CO2 catalytic conversion\"; it was also selected by Nature magazine as one of the notable research achievements of that time.

According to the person in charge of the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, this technology enables a conversion rate of 95% for carbon dioxide and hydrogen. The selectivity of gasoline among all carbon-containing products is above 85%, which significantly reduces the consumption of raw hydrogen and carbon dioxide. The overall energy consumption of the process is low, and the gasoline produced is environmentally friendly and clean. Tests conducted by third parties show that its octane rating exceeds 90, while its boiling range and composition meet the requirements of National VI standards. The Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics overcomes the technical challenges related to converting carbon dioxide and hydrogen into gasoline by relying on a special catalyst.

The research team developed a highly efficient and stable Na-Fe3O4/HZSM-5 multifunctional composite catalyst, which has three major advantages. Firstly, under conditions close to industrial production, this catalyst achieves low selectivity for methane and carbon monoxide; the selectivity for gasoline-range hydrocarbons (C5-C11) among the hydrocarbon products reaches 78%, which is favorable for large-scale production ； Secondly, the gasoline produced by this method meets environmental regulations; its components are mainly high-octane isoparaffins and aromatics, which essentially satisfy the requirements set by the National V standard regarding the composition of benzene, aromatics, and olefins ； Thirdly, this catalyst possesses good stability and can operate continuously for over 1,000 hours, indicating potential application prospects. It is precisely because of the superiority of this catalyst that its use in converting carbon dioxide and hydrogen into gasoline enables large-scale production. After going through processes such as laboratory tests and the scale-up of catalyst production to tonnage levels, a pilot plant with a capacity of 1,000 tons was built in the Zoucheng Industrial Park in Shandong in 2020. Subsequent steps included trial operations with feed materials, full-scale operation, and optimization of data from industrial processes, ultimately achieving an annual production capacity of 10 million tons. In the future, efforts will be directed toward reaching a production capacity of 10,000 tons.

According to Du Hanshuang, the chief engineer of Shandong Hengxin Group, the total investment in this pilot plant is 11 million yuan. The successful oil production in this pilot test lays a solid foundation for the group to proceed with the construction of 10,000-ton production facilities in the next step. Sun Jian, a researcher at the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, believes that after going through processes such as laboratory tests and the scale-up production of catalysts on a tonnage basis, a pilot plant with a capacity of one thousand tons was built in the Zoucheng Industrial Park in Shandong in 2020. A total investment of over 40 million yuan was made in this plant, and it was able to undergo trial operations with feedstock input, enter full-scale operation, and see improvements in its industrial process parameters. In October 2021, it passed the on-site assessment organized by the China Petroleum and Chemical Industry Federation. Sun Jian said that this technology can achieve a conversion rate of 95% for carbon dioxide and hydrogen, with a selectivity for gasoline among all carbon-containing products exceeding 85%. It significantly reduces the consumption of raw hydrogen and carbon dioxide, results in low energy consumption for the entire process, and the resulting gasoline product is environmentally friendly and clean. According to third-party tests, its octane rating is over 90, and its boiling range and composition meet the National VI standards.

If it is technically and economically feasible, power plants and petrochemical plants can be integrated

Technology is only feasible in theory; I believe that for achieving carbon neutrality, the most reliable approaches are technologies that use carbon dioxide and green hydrogen to produce green methanol. Methanol can be used as both a fuel and a raw material in the chemical industry. Moreover, the production process is also shorter than that for producing gasoline. Fuel-based refineries are now in the process of transformation.

Methanol is the basic route; do many of the industrial chains below bypass methanol directly? ?

From a thermodynamic perspective, such a device is certainly not economical without a large supply of very cheap hydrogen. However, driven by the need to reduce emissions and achieve carbon neutrality, the problem of producing hydrogen from cheap energy sources (such as nuclear fusion energy, abundant solar energy, and other renewable energy sources) has been resolved, making this process highly promising. Since this reaction is essentially a hydrogenation reaction – carbon dioxide is hydrogenated to produce carbon monoxide, and carbon monoxide together with hydrogen forms syngas – cheap energy is used to supply hydrogen at a low cost. Of course, a large amount of heat is generated during this reaction (as hydrogen takes the oxygen from carbon dioxide to form water), and this heat needs to be recovered using waste heat boilers.