【Ten Years of Rapid Development in Chemical Equipment】From 1979 to 2022: Recovering Carbon Dioxide from Air, Converting It into Methanol, and Then Using It to Produce Green Gasoline

Step 1: Wind energy → Green electricity → Water electrolysis → Green hydrogen, 53° south latitude, 70° west longitude. In the Magallanes Region of Chile, at the southern tip of South America, the barren and unfertile Patagonian Plateau is rich in a source of green energy: strong winds, which blow in a consistent direction at steady speeds. It is estimated that electricity generation in the Magellan region could reach 7 times the current national electricity production of Chile. Therefore, the Haru Oni demonstration project by Chile’s HIF company chose to build its factory here. Unlike gray hydrogen produced from fossil fuels, this project uses proton exchange membrane (PEM) technology to convert wind energy into green hydrogen through water electrolysis.

Step 2: Air → Carbon dioxide capture. This project uses direct air capture equipment with a Global Thermostat (GT) to capture carbon dioxide. This process only consumes steam and electricity, producing no emissions or other waste water. Step 3: Hydrogen + carbon dioxide → methanol. In this process, green hydrogen and carbon dioxide are mixed together, and after a catalytic reaction, green methanol is produced. According to the project’s official website, by 2022, the project’s methanol production is expected to reach approximately 750,000 liters per year on an initial basis. By 2027, the project will be put into commercial operation, with an estimated production of 1 million tons of green methanol per year.

Methanol → Synthetic gasoline: Methanol is vaporized and superheated through a series of heat exchangers, after which it is fed into a fluidized bed reactor to be converted into hydrocarbon fuel and water. The project utilizes the fluidized bed methanol to gasoline (FMTG) process technology jointly developed by ExxonMobil and Sinopec Refining & Chemical Engineering Group, as well as Mobil’s patented FMTG catalyst technology, along with the FMTG unit designed by Sinopec, to convert green methanol into synthetic gasoline. At present, the scale of the pilot plant for Phase 1 of the project is an annual production of 130,000 liters of synthetic gasoline. The overall project plan is divided into two phases. Phase 1 is scheduled to be completed by 2025, with the capacity to produce 55 million liters of synthetic gasoline per year, while Phase 2 is targeted for completion by 2027, allowing for the production of over 550 million liters of synthetic gasoline per year. The energy required for each of the aforementioned production stages comes from zero-carbon sources, resulting in almost complete carbon neutrality across the entire production chain. That is, after the production of these fuels, carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere do not increase. Therefore, this synthetic gasoline is a truly “carbon-neutral” gasoline

Since March 2021, a consortium composed of Guangzhou Engineering Company of the Refining and Chemical Engineering Group and the Luoyang Technology R&D Center has been responsible for the design, procurement, manufacturing and integration, domestic hot-testing, on-site training, and installation and commissioning of four pilot-scale units for methanol-to-gasoline production under this project, ensuring that \"green gasoline\" that truly achieves carbon neutrality was produced on December 20. It is reported that this project is an environmental initiative in Chile aimed at implementing a hydrogen energy development strategy and advancing carbon neutrality in an innovative manner. It also represents the first overseas industrial application of the fluidized bed methanol to gasoline (FMTG) process technology, which was developed with Chinese participation.

Thank you for sharing. So can it be used to replace oil in the production of gasoline? What is the price of gasoline? What industrial applications does it have?