Methanol producing plant

CASE 2 TURBOEXPANDERS INSTALLED AT AN OLDER METHANOL PRODUCING PLANT PROVIDE MAJOR ENERGY SAVINGS... 

Mega-Methanol This is a category of methanol-producing plant, not a particular process. Such plants have capacities of up to 10,000 tons per day. Engineering companies that have designed or built such plants include Lurgi and Davy. 

Produced from a.tura.1 Ga.s, Cost assessments of methanol produced from natural gas have been performed (13—18). Projections depend on such factors as the estimated costs of the methanol production faciUty, the value of the feedstock, and operating, maintenance, and shipping costs. Estimates vary for each of these factors. Costs also depend on the value of oil. Oil price not only affects the value of natural gas, it also affects the costs of plant components, labor, and shipping. 

The alkalized zinc oxide—chromia process developed by SEHT was tested on a commercial scale between 1982 and 1987 in a renovated high pressure methanol synthesis plant in Italy. This plant produced 15,000 t/yr of methanol containing approximately 30% higher alcohols. A demonstration plant for the lEP copper—cobalt oxide process was built in China with a capacity of 670 t/yr, but other higher alcohol synthesis processes have been tested only at bench or pilot-plant scale (23). 

Monsanto disclosed the manufacture of ethylbenzene through a different approach by the methylation of toluene in the side chain.318 A cesium-exchanged faujasite promoted by boron or phosphorus is used as the catalyst. Toluene and methanol (5 1) reacting at 400-475°C produce an ethylbenzene-styrene mixture at very high toluene conversion. About 50% of the methanol is converted to carbon monoxide and hydrogen, which is a disadvantage since such a plant should operate in conjunction with a methanol synthesis plant. 

Producers can also source across a mix of plants, and maximize their production at plants offering the best economics at a given moment. Leading methanol producer Methanex exemplifies this approach, optimizing production across its global network. A number of players in the fertilizer industry are also developing this approach, including Koch Industries and Yara. 

The wood cost per ton of methanol produced is between US 42.8 and 64.2 (2.6 to 3.0 t of wood per ton of methanol). These costs can be reduced if the plant is located inside the forest itself. ... 

Power plants using fuel cells can now take the place of the present polluting coal or oil-based (indirect) electricity-producing plants. However, in a further development, it would be possible to extract COz from the atmosphere, and H2 from solar-driven electrolysis, to produce methanol with zero net injection of C02 into the atmosphere. These plants would at first ran on hydrogen from these fossil fuels, the attraction being the reduction of pollution and the increase in the conversion efficiency. To what extent the latter two commodities would be supplied from remote sites, or collected onsite at... 

Degradation studies of the tropolone C-ring of (-)-colchicine 4 were extensively conducted in the mid 20th century [for reviews 14,68,69], In particular, treatment of colchicine or isocolchicine with sodium methoxide in refluxing methanol produces allocolchicine 1 [70,71]. This finding, along with the fact that both alkaloids occur in the same plant, support the hypothesis that allocolchicine 1 is biosynthetically derived from colchicine 4. 

The plant consumes about 3 tons wood/ton methanol produced, based upon 35% moisture content of the wood. 

The converged mass and heat balances and the exergy loss profiles produced by the Aspen Plus simulator can help in assessing the thermodynamic performance of distillation columns. The exergy values are estimated from the enthalpy and entropy of the streams generated by the simulator. In the following examples, the assessment studies illustrate the use of exergy in the separation sections of a methanol production plant, a 15-component two-column... 

Commodity chemicals share the same benefits of economies of scale. Typical process units are 1-2 orders of magnitude smaller than refinery units, although large methanol synthesis plants can produce up to several Mt/a (Section 4.7.1). Since a chemically pure material is being produced, often in a stoichiometric reaction, the catalyst system now becomes more specialized, the reactor may require special metallurgy, and product purification starts to be an issue. 

The company from vhich the purchase may be made has indicated that the plant will produce 4.3 X 1(P metric tons per year of specification-grade methanol. The plant may be assumed to operate 350 days per year. 

A small scale test plant with a methanol production capacity of 50 kg/day has been designed and constructed in order to examine the performance of a Cu/ZnO-based multicomponent catalyst under practical reaction conditions. The production rate of methanol over the multicomponent catalyst was around 600 g/l-cat-h under the reaction conditions of 523 K, 5 MPa, and SV=10,000h The purity of methanol produced was 99.9%. 

There are presently 16 synthetic methanol producers in the United States. These are listed in Table 6.7. Except for a small (10,000 ton/yr) plant to be built in West Covina, California, by TeraMeth, there are no expansions planned for the United States. 

For reasons of confidentiality, exact details of the reactor designs have to remain undisclosed in this discussion. The final economic analysis, however, incorporates them in a 20% estimate of the major equipment cost. The installation factor, defined as the ratio of the final cost over the cost of major equipment items, is projected to be in the order of 2 here, as foundations, piping, general infrastructure will be far less extensive in this compact and highly physically integrated plant. Table 3.4 compares the cost of methanol produced for three cases ... 

Since the transesterification of dimethyl terephthalate (DMT) requires a methanol recovery plant, and the esterification of terephthalic acid (TPA) with ethylene glycol renders higher yields possible, processes to produce TPA are gaining a greater share of the manufacturing capacity, at the expense of DMT. 

About half of the methanol produced in the United States is used in the production of formaldehyde, which is used as embalming fluid and in the plastics industry. It s also sometimes added to ethanol to make it unfit for human consumption, a process called denaturing. Methanol is also being considered as a replacement to gasoline, but some major problems still need to be overcome. A process that uses methanol in the production of gasoline does exist. New Zealand currently has such a plant that produces about a third of its gasoline. 

Figure 8.16 Yields of cocaine-content pastelike plant extract can be increased by treating it with hydrochloric acid to hydrolyze the extract to ecgonine. Treatment with boron chloride in methanol produces methyl ecgonine, which is converted to cocaine by the addition of benzoyl chloride and benzene. 

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