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

Abstract

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 ${\mathrm{k}\mathrm{g}}_{{\mathrm{C}\mathrm{O}}_{2,\mathrm{e}\mathrm{q}}}/{\mathrm{k}\mathrm{g}}_{\mathrm{M}\mathrm{e}\mathrm{O}\mathrm{H}}$ , 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.