Tag: Methanol

We are very pleased to be able to tell you that, as of this issue, Nitrogen+Syngas magazine has a new publisher. Or rather, an old publisher, as the magazine is now once again part of the CRU Group.

Jiangsu Sailboat Petrochemical has started up a CO2 -to-methanol plant at the Shenghong Petrochemical Industrial Park. The plant was developed in conjunction with Iceland’s Carbon Recycling International (CRI), with the plant brought to life in under two years from the initial contract signing. The methanol plant uses CRI’s proprietary emissions-to-liquids (ETL) technology, transforming waste carbon dioxide and hydrogen gases into sustainable, commercial-grade methanol. According to CRI, uses 150,000 t/a of carbon dioxide sourced from waste streams at the large petrochemical complex as feedstock, significantly reducing emissions that would have otherwise been released into the atmosphere. The plant has the capacity to produce 100,000 t/a of sustainable methanol, used primarily to supply Jiangsu’s methanol to olefins facility to produce chemical derivatives, including sustainable plastics and EVA coatings for solar panels. This is expected to reduce the reliance on fossil-based methanol to drive more sustainable value chains and carbon footprint reduction initiatives across various sectors, such as industrial manufacturing and renewable energy.

Tampa ammonia contract prices increased dramatically during September, from $395/tonne c.fr to $575/ tonne c.fr. The main culprit was plant outages and reduced production at several plants in the region. The tight supply situation was exacerbated by a delay to the restart of Ma’aden’s 1.1 million t/a ammonia plant in Saudi Arabia.

With low carbon ammonia and methanol being considered not just for their chemical and fertilizer uses, but as fuels, can we make enough of them to fill our energy needs?

Low carbon production is attracting considerable attention to using syngas derivatives as fuels, but there are considerable logistical and commercial barriers to overcome.

SunGas Renewables Inc. has formed a new subsidiary, Beaver Lake Renewable Energy, LLC (BLRE), to construct a new green methanol production facility in central Louisiana. The project will have a capacity of 400,000 t/a of green methanol, using gasified biomass, specifically wood fibre from local, sustainably-managed forests as feedstock. The methanol will have a negative carbon intensity through sequestration of the nearly 1.0 million t/a of carbon dioxide produced by the project, which will be executed by Denbury Carbon Solutions. The methanol will then be used as a clean marine fuel by A.P. Moller–Maersk, which is building a fleet of methanol-powered container vessels.

Ammonia prices have now dropped by about 50% from their highs a year ago. Gas prices have fallen, particularly in Europe, and peak fertilizer application season is over in Europe and North America, leading to slackening demand., leading to slackening demand.

The International Methanol Technology Operators Forum (IMTOF) met at the Leonardo Royal St Paul’s hotel in London from June 11th-14th.

While demand for ammonia remains – for now at least – strongly tied to fertilizer and farming, over the three decades that I’ve edited this publication, methanol’s story has been a very different one, with a succession of major new slices of demand coming every few years from new applications that flare up and then mature or even drop away again. For a while in the 1990s it was MTBE, the oxygenated fuel additive that had a brief flourish in the US before being shut down by leaking fuel tanks leaching into ground water. Then there was dimethyl ether (DME) as a blendstock for LPG, and methanol itself directly blended into gasoline in China to keep up with soaring vehicle fuel demand. More recently, methanol to olefins (MTO) has added almost another 25% of demand over and above existing chemical and fuel uses. But as the world cracks down on coal production and use, China’s attempt to use methanol as a way of using domestic coal to replace imported oil seems to have passed its high water mark and begun to recede.

A round-up of current and proposed projects involving non-nitrogen synthesis gas derivatives, including methanol, hydrogen, synthetic/substitute natural gas (SNG) and gas- and coal-toliquids (GTL/CTL) plants.