Implications in the production of defossilized methanol: A study on carbon sources

The transition of the current fossil based chemical industry to a carbon-neutral industry can be done by the substitution of fossil carbon for defossilized carbon in the production of base chemicals. Methanol is one of the seven base chemicals, which could be used to produce other base chemicals (light olefins and aromatics). In this research, we evaluated the synthesis of methanol based on defossilized carbon sources (maize, waste biomass, direct air capture of CO₂ (DAC), and CO₂ from the cement industry) by considering carbon source availability, energy, water, and land demand. This evaluation was based on a carbon balance for each of the carbon sources. Our results show that maize, waste biomass, and CO₂ cement could supply 0.7, 2, 15 times the carbon demand for methanol respectively. Regarding the energy demand maize, waste biomass, DAC, and CO₂ from cement demand 25, 21, 48, and 45GJton_MeOH separately. The demand for water is 5300, 220, 8, and 8m³ton_MeOH. And lastly, land demand was estimated to 1031, 36, 83, and 77m²ton_MeOH per carbon source. The high-demanding-resource production of defossilized methanol is dependent on the availability of resources per location. Therefore, we analyzed the production of defossilized methanol in the Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, China, and the USA. China is the only country where CO₂ from the cement industry could provide all the demand of carbon. But as we envision society becoming carbon neutral, CO₂ from the cement industry would diminish in time, as a consequence, it would not be sufficient to supply the demand for carbon. DAC would be the only source able to provide the demand for defossilized carbon.