Student name Alexander Boorman Luke Devlin :) Thomas Grey Sultan Alameri Akel Samad Nathan Rewhorn Introduction Market trends/demand for product Product uses and markets Potential routes for manufacturing Sources of

raw materials General safety / environmental considerations Process Economics Process flow diagram of selected route Key process data e.g. temperatures, pressures catalysts etc. Waste Streams and required utilities Mass balance - Reactors Mass balance - Flash Distillation Mass balance - Distillation Energy balance Aspen Method write up Calculations write up Introduction Market trends/demand for product Product uses and markets Potential routes for manufacturing Student number 40292850 40321549 40295339 40282522 40388686 40325932 Sources of raw materials General safety/environmental considerations Thomas Alexander Thomas, Sultan Alexander Akel Luke Nathan Nathan Luke Nathan, Thomas, Sultan, Akel Thomas, Luke, Nathan Alexander Akel, Sultan Nathan, Alexander Nathan, Alexander Sultan, Akel Process Economics Process flow diagram of selected route Key process data, e.g. temperatures, pressures catalysts etc. Waste streams and required utilities Introduction The current production of methanol is around 90 million tones per annum. This is expected to grow by 4.30% per year until 2032. This increase shows that the market is expected to steadily increase in size in the mid-term 4. Currently the Asia Pasific region are the largest consumers of methanol using around 65% of the world wide methanol due to their large manufacturing industry. As of 2020 65% of methanol produced was grey methanol (natural gas), 34% was brown methanol (coal), with the remaining 1% being green methanol (biogas/biowaste). This is expected to trend towards more green methanol and less brown methanol due to lowered carbon emissions as well as diversifying away from reliance on natural gas. ¹ USD/GJ 100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 Market trends/demand for product 10 0 2020 2050 Fig1- Current costs vs future costs of bio-methanol1 2020 E-methanol Fossil-based Bio-methanol Bio-methanol methanol price (current cost) (future cost) (current cost) 2050 E-methanol (future cost) Fig 1 visualizes the difference between current bio-methanol cost and future bio-methanol costs. The graph shows that currently fossil-based methanol costs between $10-$20/GJ and bio- methanol costs between $18-$50/GJ. This shows that in the right conditions currently the bio- methanol can be competitive however as the methods used for fossil-based have had many years of development to cut costs. There are currently only around 10 running plants which are mostly small scale and experimental. Once larger scale plants are running bio-methanol is expected to be competitive compared to fossil-based methanol with a predicted cost between $12-$30/GJ. E-methanol currently costs $40-$90/GJ which shows it is currently not a feasible option. The use of methanol as a fuel in the shipping industry is growing particularly fast in part due to the fact methanol is a liquid at atmospheric temperatures and pressures which allow for simple storage compared to other alternative fuels such as liquefied natural gas (LNG) which requires expensive very cold tanks to be used as a liquid fuel. Another advantage is over 80% of the top 100 largest ports in the world have facilities that can store methanol with minimal upgrades. The shipping company Maersk have recently agreed to purchase 16,000 tons of green methanol a year which is another example of the trend towards green methanol.² USD/T $1,000 $800 $600 $400 $200 $0 Methanol prices over the last 20 years AM Oct-03 Oct-04 Oct-05 Oct-06 Oct-07 Oct-08 60-120 Oct-10 Oct-11 Oct-12 Oct-13 Oct-14 Oct-15 Oct-16 Oct-17 Oct-18 Oct-19 Oct-20 Oct-21 Oct-22 Oct-23 Date AFA Non-Discounted -Methanex Reference Price -Methanex European Posted Contract Price -Methanex Asian Posted Contract Price Fig 2- Methanol prices over the last 20 years5 Fig is the methanol prices of the Methanex non-discounted reference price, Methanex European posted contract price and Methanex Asian posted contract price in USD/T from October 2003 to October 2023. This graph shows that prices of methanol have been relatively stable over the last 20 years with large price increases in 2007-2008 and in 2021-2022. In the last 5 years the highest price on the European market was $570/T from April - June 2022. This coincided with the high natural gas prices that occurred in 2022. The October 2023 Methanex European posted contract price was $370/T and the average over the 20 years was $328.20/T. Methane is one of the reactants used for this process. It can currently be used in chemical processes or in energy production. For this process biomethane has been chosen as the source for methane. Over 2021 there was a 20% increase in the production of biomethane in The EU. The price went from 80 €/MWh by the 1st of January 2022 as opposed to 134 €/MWh at the start of the year. It is expected that over the next 10 years it predicted that there will be an average of a 4.7% increase in the production of biomethane. It is hoped by 2050 the production of biomethane will have been doubled. This suggests that that there will be a sufficient supply of biomethane to satisfy the demands of the plant. 2⁰ Product Uses and Markets Uses of methanol: “Methanol and its derivative products such as ascetic acid and formaldehyde created via chemical reactions are used as base materials in acrylic plastic; synthetic fabrics and fibres used to make clothing; adhesives, paint, and plywood used in construction; and as a chemical agent in pharmaceuticals and agrichemicals." Methanol has many different uses, in 2019 almost 100Mt of methanol was produced; one of methanol's first uses is as a raw material to be synthesised into a variety of other chemicals nearly 60% of all methanol produced was used in the synthesising of chemicals; these chemicals include but are not limited to: formaldehyde, acetic acid, methyl methacrylate, ethylene, and propylene. These chemicals are produced by using the methanol-to-olefin route (MTO), these chemicals can be further processed and turned into many products that are used in everyday life. Due to the rise of the MTO process methanol has seen a large rise in its use in the petrochemical industry in the last 15 years, being used in the production of polyethylene and polypropylene, this has seen tremendous growth in China. Formaldehyde is the largest- volume chemical derived from methanol; it is mainly used for the preparation of further chemicals such as: phenol-, urea-, melamine-formaldehyde and polyacetal resins, as well as butanediol and methylenebis(4-phenyl isocyanate) (MDI). MDI foam can be used in door and refrigerator insulation, as well as being used for insulation in car dashboards and fenders. The resins formed from formaldehyde have a wide range of uses in the wood industry, these can include adhesives, or being used to manufacture particle boards, plywood and other sorts of wood panels. As well as being used as a raw material, methanol can also be utilised as a fuel. Since the middle of the 2000s the use of methanol as a fuel has grown rapidly, this is either with methanol as a fuel by itself, as a blend with gasoline, or in the form of methyl tert-butyl ether (MTBE) and dimethyl ether (DME), these fuels represent around 31% of global methanol consumption. "Because methanol does not produce soot, fumes or odour, it is also widely used in cook stoves, DME, produced from methanol by simple dehydration, is a gas that can be liquefied at moderate pressure, much like liquefied petroleum gas (LPG). DME as a diesel fuel substitute with a high cetane rating and producing no soot emissions”. Another sector that is seeing growth in the use of methanol, is maritime transport; in 2020 more than 20 large maritime vessels were in use. Methanol is a very good alternative to current fuels used in the maritime shipping industry due to it being sulphur free after its production process, current guidelines state that the sulphur limit in fuels is now 0.5%. There is also evidence that methanol could be used as an alternative fuel in the aviation industry, methanol can potentially be converted into kerosene type fuels, unfortunately methanol is currently not a good option for conventional aircraft currently due to its lower volumetric energy density compared to kerosene. However, it could possibly see use in hybrid electric aircraft, if viable these aircraft could potentially reduce the pollution, noise and emissions, by up to 40-60%, if successful these aircraft would be incredibly suitable for short haul regional flights.