The impact of the development of catalyst and reaction system of the methanol synthesis stage on the overall profitability of the entire plant: A techno-economic study

In this work, a detailed techno-economic assessment is carried out for methanol synthesis process that utilizes Cu/ZnO catalyst. First, a base-case plant is designed using a commercial methanol process. The economic feasibility study was developed to identify the potential performance metrics of the future catalytic systems and the boundaries upon which the catalyst could impact the profitability of the methanol process. In particular, the performance indicators investigated in this work look at the case of higher per-pass conversion (by introduction of higher efficiency catalysts), and the potential of utilizing low pressure reactors that could minimize compression costs. The results of this work indicated that synthesizing a catalyst with higher per-pass conversion has no significant effect on the process profitability. However, reducing the methanol synthesis reaction pressure could lead to a substantial improvement in the profitability of the plant. Insights obtained from this work can be used as the basis for identifying the characteristics of the future catalytic systems that have the potential to significantly decrease the costs associated with the conventional methanol synthesis plants.