Recent Developments in Methanol Technology by Air Liquide for CO₂ Reduction and CO₂ Usage

Abstract

Within the energy transition and decarbonization of the industrial sector, one of the main challenges is identifying competitive solutions to capture CO 2 from chemical and energy plants to reduce emissions. The reduction of the carbon footprint as well as the valorization of CO 2 -rich gases are of increasing interest for many industries and methanol is a perfect fit for energy storage, for producing clean fuels, and as building block for producing high value chemicals. In this article, an update of recent developments by Air Liquide Engineering & Construction regarding methanol technology is provided, focusing on CO 2 reduction of large-scale plants and on new solutions for CO 2 utilization. For large-scale methanol plants, drop-in solutions using carbon capture technologies can be proposed to dramatically decrease the CO 2 emissions.

Direct Hydrogenation of Carbon Dioxide to Methanol: Systematic Generation of Multi-Stage Designs

“…The hydrogenation of CO 2 to methanol produces water and since commercial methanol catalysts tend to deactivate faster in the presence of water, a process concept based on multi-stage reactors with intercondensation is investigated. This concept is also suggested by others [6][7][8]. Here, based on a reaction kinetic model, a path optimization method is applied for the systematic staging of the process.…”

“…All three works [5][6][7] are based on a Cu/ZnO/Al 2 O 3 catalyst. A similar concept is proposed by Air Liquide [8,9] that is called second generation CO 2 -based methanol. They use a new reactor concept, that is earlier applied as heat exchangers, called a pillow plate reactor.…”

Hydrogen intensified synthesis processes to valorise process off-gases in integrated steelworks

“…A new multi-stage methanol reactor concept was designed, commissioned and extensively tested at pilot-scale (Fig. 2c) by Air Liquide [30] (REAC3).…”