Methanol is a very important primary raw material for the petrochemical and energy industries. It is used to produce basic chemicals including formaldehyde, acetic acid, methyl formate, dimethyl ether, methyl and dimethylamineand dimethylamine carbonate and it is widely used in the chemical, pesticide, medical, dye and paint industries.
The ever-increasing production of chemicals creates some serious environmental problems due to the emission of greenhouse gases and wastes, and at present, environmental protection is of great importance for economic development. Therefore, production processes should be designed and operated aiming at reducing environmental pollution, and to this end, the environmental impacts of production processes should be evaluated quantitatively.
Pak Kyong Song, a researcher at the Faculty of Chemical Engineering, evaluated and compared the potential environmental impacts of two gas-to-methanol (GTM) process options according to the CO2 feed location using CO2 recycle ratios.
The results showed that, as the recycle ratio increases, both the potential environment impact (PEI) rate of the chemical process and the energy generation process decrease, and the total rate PEI output of the process and PEI generation rate decrease as a whole.
Also, process option 1 has lower PEI rates than process option 2 and it is therefore more environmentally friendly.
For more information, please refer to his paper “Potential Environmental Impact Evaluation of the Methanol Synthesis Process by Gas-to-Methanol Technology” in “ACS Omega” (SCI).