Cradle to Gate
Identity ID
651cae03-4911-4c5b-a0d4-5927903ba714
Materials
Associated ID
8050dd08-dbe2-4f87-9a8e-dbd76004b207
Included activities starts
Included activities ends
Description
Methanol is one of the important chemicals produced from synthetic gas and serves as both a key chemical feedstock and a fuel. This dataset includes primary raw materials, auxiliary materials, energy inputs, waste outputs, and atmospheric emissions from the production process. Infrastructure such as production equipment and factory construction is not included within the system boundary of the dataset. The life cycle inventory data are sourced from literature. The methanol production process includes coal processing, gasification, gas purification, methanol synthesis, and methanol refining stages.
Activity Description
The production activities of this product include coal processing, gasification reaction, gas purification, methanol synthesis, and methanol refining processes.
Process Description
Methanol is an organic compound with the molecular formula CH4O. It is a colorless, transparent, flammable, volatile, and toxic liquid with a pungent odor, exhibiting a slight alcoholic scent. It remains liquid under normal temperature and pressure conditions. Methanol is miscible with water and highly soluble in gasoline; its vapor can form explosive mixtures with air. This product is one of the key chemicals produced from synthesis gas and serves as both an important chemical feedstock and a fuel.
Time period
2017
2026
Geography
China
Macroeconomic value
Business-as-Usual
Data validation
Yes
Technology
Current Technology
Technology comment
The coal-to-methanol route for methanol production typically involves three steps: coal processing, synthetic gas generation via coal gasification technology, and methanol synthesis. After mining and coal preparation, the resulting hard coal is fed into gasifiers such as GE/Texaco to produce raw synthetic gas. An additional air separation unit is required in this process to supply pure oxygen. Prior to methanol synthesis, the H/C ratio of the raw synthetic gas (approximately 2.1--2.1) is adjusted via a water-gas shift reaction. 2), then after cooling, the gas enters a purification unit to remove CO2, H2S, CO, and other impurities, producing by-products such as sulfur. Additionally, part of the unreacted gas is recycled back into the gasifier. Finally, in the presence of a catalyst (typically Cu/ZnO/Al2O3) and under specific reaction conditions, the cleaned synthetic gas is converted into crude methanol, which is subsequently distilled in a refining unit to produce refined methanol. Different technologies used in each step of coal-to-methanol production lead to significant variations in resource and energy efficiency, as well as pollutant emissions, with the greatest differences observed in the coal gasification step. Gasification technologies are mainly divided into three types: fixed bed, fluidized bed, and entrained bed. Fixed bed coal gasification for direct methanol production and co-production of ammonia and methanol represents the traditional coal-to-methanol process; entrained bed gasification technologies, represented by coal-water slurry and pulverized coal gasification, are new coal-to-methanol production processes.