Alternative production of methanol from industrial CO₂

Carbon dioxide valorization into value added products have become subject to much study to reduce industrial CO₂ emissions and fossil energy resource consumption. In this context, the purpose of this study is to evaluate and highlight the interest of CO₂ conversion into methanol through a complete techno-economic and environmental assessment of the entire process chain. The integrated process, successfully implemented in Aspen Plus^®, is designed to treat the CO₂ coming from a conventional cement plant. A MEA-based CO₂ capture process is considered, and the captured CO₂ is then directly sent to the conversion unit for its catalytic conversion. Consequently, combining the two units leads to relevant integrations, especially regarding the reuse of the heat provided by the exothermal methanol reactions for the regeneration of the CO₂ capture solvent. An economic assessment is proposed to estimate the operational and investment costs, as well as the net present value, which demonstrates that the economic feasibility strongly depends on electricity and H₂ production costs. A Life Cycle Analysis method is finally performed to identify the main environmental hotspots. The underlying process design offers a significant reduction in greenhouse gases (besides other categories) when compared to the conventional fossil production from natural gas.