Production of Methanol and Dimethyl ether from biomass derived syngas - a comparison of the different synthesis pathways by means of flowsheet simulation

Increasing awareness of the environmental issues forces a strong drive towards the development of new, sustainable processes for renewable energy production. Likewise, the economic issues related to the increasing prices of crude oil, and its derivatives lead to the recognition of advantages of alternative fuels, thus a significant interest in biomass-derived, synthetic fuels is observed. Among various thermo-chemical conversion processes, biomass gasification is one of the most effective, efficient and sustainable solutions to the production of renewable energy. It provides a gaseous fuel, composed mainly of carbon monoxide and hydrogen, suitable to produce chemicals, heat, and energy. In particular, syngas can be used to obtain methanol (MeOH) and dimethyl ether (DME), both energy carriers of great interest for many advanced energy applications. The herein presented work provides the reader with a comparison of the technicalities as well as economics of methanol and DME production from biomass-derived syngas, by different pathways. For that purpose a process simulation by means of the ChemCAD^® commercial code was used. The developed simulation strategies include both, optimization of the kinetic models and unique solution of fuel refinement.