(698d) World’s Largest Commercial CO2 to Methanol Demonstration Plant

The George Olah CO₂ to methanol plant, commissioned in April 2012, currently produces ~ 5 million liters/year renewable methanol and captures up to ~ 5600 ton CO₂/year in the process. [Lim 2016, Nature, 526(630)] This Carbon Recycling International (CRI) plant is located in Svartsengi, near Grindavik, Iceland.

The process was originally developed by a small CRI team in Reykjavik, and has undergone several iterations to arrive at the present state of technology and functionality. Taking the process from pilot scale to industrial scale was not trivial. Several difficulties encountered along the way were resolved to arrive at the current robust version of the technology. The high purity renewable methanol currently produced is sold as gasoline additive, similar to ethanol in the USA.

There exist two viable catalytic routes to convert CO₂ to methanol. Perhaps the most familiar option is to first reduce CO₂ to CO through the RWGS reaction and then reduce CO with H₂ to methanol in a second step. The CRI process instead implements the direct hydrogenation of CO₂ with H₂ over a mixed metal oxide catalyst.

The presentation will include a brief history of the R&D and early development of the process, followed by a discussion of selected process features and performance metrics.

The presentation will conclude with a brief discussion of world-wide implementation opportunities, for example the transformation of stranded H₂ into a liquid commodity, or as a combined CO₂ and energy sink for intermittent renewables.