The importance of renewable fuel production has become significant
in terms of supplying energy carriers for the transportation
sector and storing electricity overflows from intermittent sources.
Consequently, renewable methanol from electrolysis and a biogas
origin is investigated. Two plant sizes have been established; farm
and large scale. Three novel conceptual plant designs have been
addressed and modeled through Aspen Plus®. An heat integration
and economic assessment of capital and operational costs were established
to estimate methanol production prices. The three designs
have been subjected to a cost-optimization to minimize production
costs.
It was found, that large scale methanol production is favored by
economy of scale and that large plants based on partial oxidation
reforming yielded the lowest cost. The methanol production price
was found in the range of 418-687 USD/ton. Due to the competitive
prices, the establishment of the novel schemes are projected to be
an incentive to enhance biogas production. Despite the finding that
methanol can be produced at competitive prices, basing a Danish
methanol infrastructure entirely on synthesis of biogas is unlikely,
due to low methanol conversion efficiencies.