Techno-Economic Assessment of Conceptual Design for Methanol Production Using Coal and Natural Gas Based Parallel Process Configuration

Abstract Methanol production has gained a lot of attention due to its wide application in both the process and product industries. This study aims to investigate the coal/methane based process for simultaneous methanol and power generation. Two process models were developed in Aspen Plus and techno-economically compared. Case 1 is taken as a base case model that represents the coal to methanol (CTM) technology. Case 2 represents the sequential integration between the coal gasification and methane reforming technologies to enhance both the synthesis gas and methanol production capacity. It has been seen from results that case 2 design has a potential to boost up the methanol production compared to the case 1 design. In terms of process performance, the overall process efficiencies for the case 1 and case 2 is calculated as 63.2% and 70.0%, respectively. Moreover, the carbon conversion efficiency for case 2 design is nearly 6% higher than the case 1 design. In terms of methanol production cost, case 1 and case 2 offered 0.25€/kg and 0.23€/kg, respectively. While evaluating other process performance and environmental quality control indicators, it has been analysed from results that case 2 offers higher process feasibility compared to the case 1 design.