Direct pressurized oxidation of methane to methanol with hydrogen peroxide

2 Direct pressurized oxidation of methane to methanol with hydrogen peroxide 

Methane is a practically inexhaustible natural material from which many valuable organic compounds are produced. One of the products is methanol used in the production of formaldehyde, synthetic rubber, acetic acid, methyl acetate, etc. In this connection, investigators have aimed their recent efforts at intensifying existing production techniques and developing new economic processes for its production. Creation of such technologies will solve the actual problems of the modem chemical industry related to natural gas conversion to more easily transportable fuels, industrial supply of valuable semiproduct and expanded production of high-octane fuels [119]. 

Besides gasoline, methanol is the most promising alternative fuel. Unfortunately, there are only a few industrial units all over the world that process natural gas to motor fuels based on its preliminary conversion to synthetic gas. This is a multistage, power-consuming process, which requires high pressure and temperature, expensive catalysts, etc. 

In addition to the search for ways of creating economic technology for natural gas processing to methanol with an intermediate synthesis gas stage, recent investigations have been aimed at direct methane oxidation by pure oxygen or in air [120, 121], 

Direct one-stage oxidation of methane to methanol is performed by two methods catalytic and thermal. Modernization of the process of methane conversion to methanol using various catalysts is ineffective, because in this case methane conversion is usually below 13%. At the present time, methane conversion to methanol has been raised to 24% [122] however, this is still insufficient for an economic assessment of the process. Hence, thermal 

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