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A simulation and thermodynamic improvement of the methanol production process with economic analysis: natural gas vapor reforming and utilization of carbon capture

  • Mi Zhou EMAIL logo
Published/Copyright: July 18, 2023
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Chemical Product and Process Modeling
From the journal Chemical Product and Process Modeling Volume 18 Issue 6

Abstract

The current investigation proposes an efficient process to produce methanol through the natural gas vapor reforming and direct hydrogenating of CO2 that reduces CO2 emission. The proposed process includes methanol synthesis in the catalytic reactor with an injection of carbon dioxide recovered from the plant’s flue and separation of methanol by distillation. An Aspen HYSYS code analyzes the proposed plant to assess the energy, exergy, economic, and environmental performances. Also, the effect of captured CO2 flow on the methanol production, carbon efficiency, stoichiometric number of synthesized gas, and reboiler and condenser duties are investigated as a sensitivity analysis. The results indicate that the methanol production rate of 82,040 kg/h provides carbon, energy and exergy efficiencies of 85 %, 77.26 % and 77.32 %, which are higher than the similar proposed plants. Regarding exergy analysis, the total exergy destruction rate is about 238,468.21 kW, in which the reforming and burner sections contribute to the highest portions of about 47 % and 30 %. The global warming potential of the process is obtained at about 0.26  k g C O 2 , e q / k g M e O H , which is reduced by captured CO2. The annual costs of investment and income are about 416,772,399 $ and 236,292,429 $, yielding 1.72 years payback period.

Keywords: carbon dioxide; energy; environment; exergy; methanol; reforming
Corresponding author: Mi Zhou, Leshan Vocational and Technical College, Leshan, Sichuan, 614000, China, E-mail:

  1. Author contributions: The author has accepted responsibility for the entire content of this submitted manuscript and approved submission.

  2. Research funding: Information: No Funding.

  3. Conflict of interest statement: The author declare no competing of interests.

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Supplementary Material

This article contains supplementary material (https://doi.org/10.1515/cppm-2023-0011).

Received: 2023-01-24
Accepted: 2023-06-21
Published Online: 2023-07-18

© 2023 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Frontmatter
  2. Research Articles
  3. Tuning of PID controllers for unstable first-order plus dead time systems
  4. Oxygen excess ratio control of PEM fuel cell: fractional order modeling and fractional filter IMC-PID control
  5. Proposal and energy/exergy/economic analyses of a smart heat recovery for distillation tower of the Naphtha Hydrotreating Unit of the Petrochemical Plant; designing a low-carbon plant
  6. Three-dimensional CFD study on thermo-hydraulic behaviour of finned tubes in a heat exchange system for heat transfer enhancement
  7. A simulation and thermodynamic improvement of the methanol production process with economic analysis: natural gas vapor reforming and utilization of carbon capture
  8. Optimization of hydrogel composition for effective release of drug
  9. Mathematical modelling of water-based biogas scrubber operating at digester pressure
  10. COCO, a process simulator: methane oxidation simulation & its agreement with commercial simulator’s predictions
  11. Hydrodynamics of shear thinning fluid in a square microchannel: a numerical approach
  12. Parameter estimation in non-linear chemical processes: an opposite point-based differential evolution (OPDE) approach
https://doi.org/10.1515/cppm-2023-0011
Keywords for this article
carbon dioxide; energy; environment; exergy; methanol; reforming

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Frontmatter
  2. Research Articles
  3. Tuning of PID controllers for unstable first-order plus dead time systems
  4. Oxygen excess ratio control of PEM fuel cell: fractional order modeling and fractional filter IMC-PID control
  5. Proposal and energy/exergy/economic analyses of a smart heat recovery for distillation tower of the Naphtha Hydrotreating Unit of the Petrochemical Plant; designing a low-carbon plant
  6. Three-dimensional CFD study on thermo-hydraulic behaviour of finned tubes in a heat exchange system for heat transfer enhancement
  7. A simulation and thermodynamic improvement of the methanol production process with economic analysis: natural gas vapor reforming and utilization of carbon capture
  8. Optimization of hydrogel composition for effective release of drug
  9. Mathematical modelling of water-based biogas scrubber operating at digester pressure
  10. COCO, a process simulator: methane oxidation simulation & its agreement with commercial simulator’s predictions
  11. Hydrodynamics of shear thinning fluid in a square microchannel: a numerical approach
  12. Parameter estimation in non-linear chemical processes: an opposite point-based differential evolution (OPDE) approach
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