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CURRENT STATUS OF TECHNOLOGY AND TRENDS

as electricity, hydrogen, fuel cell, bio diesel, methanol/DME are either costlier, or the fuel
distribution infrastructure is not ready or is prohibitively expensive. Therefore, fossil based
transportation fuels still enjoy the major market share. The future of any of the alternative
transportation fuels is still not very clear. However, as compared to hydrogen or electricity
based vehicles, methanol/DME has stronger prospects for the near future, due to the fact
that the use of blended fuel or even neat methanol/DME is possible. The cost of methanol/
DME compared to gasoline or diesel remains a challenge, but in the countries where carbon
footprint is the driving factor, these alternative fuels offer benefit.
Another important point favouring methanol and DME is that they can be produced from a wide
variety of waste materials which otherwise would have to be disposed of at a cost. Although
there are some limitations on the capacity due to feedstock availability constraints, biomass or
waste based plants are typically much smaller than fossil fuel based plants. Coupled with the
cost of feed pretreatment etc. very often the cost of methanol produced from waste may be
more than that of produced from natural gas or coal. On the flip side, the limitations of size and
cost of production are overcome by social and environmental benefits.

It is envisaged that in the near future, medium capacity plants for methanol/DME with multiple
types of feedstock derived from biomass or organic waste will come up. These plants will be
using simplified and novel low investment technologies. On the other hand, large scale plants
based on coal with co-production of methanol/DME and power through combined cycle will
also be developed. Some of these will also have carbon separation and sequestering facility.
It is projected that the growth of methanol and DME will be high in Asian countries. An
exhaustive survey on the forthcoming projects was released in 2007 by The Catalyst Group.
[37] The report projected that China is going to lead the DME market in the near future. It is to
be noted that most of these capacity expansions were projected to be coal based.

3.5 Recent Developments and Operating Prototypes

Carbon dioxide reduction with hydrogen is a dream technology, provided hydrogen is available
from non-fossil sources. Several demonstration plants are operating at present and research
interest is growing in this area. Currently, 4000 MT per year plant is operating in Iceland for
methanol production using geothermal electricity, wind mill derived hydrogen, and carbon
dioxide from flue gas [38]. Although there are not many plants operating in commercial scale,
several groups such as Haldor Topsøe and Johnson Matthey are seriously working towards
development of technology utilizing carbon dioxide.
Recently, Enerkem Inc. of Canada has commissioned a commercial scale waste to biofuel
plant in Alberta, Canada. The municipal waste after compacting is gasified in a bubbling bed
gasifier and the syngas in converted into methanol [39]. Canadian Biomass news reported
(August 2010) the commercial operation of wood biomass to methanol via syngas in Soperton,
Georgia. [40]. Maverick Synfuels has recently announced the technology for conversion of
landfill and biogas to methanol. The proposed unit will be skid mounted (up to 25 TPD methanol)
and can be assembled in a very short time [29]. During 2003, DME Development Corporation
of Japan reported a demonstration plant for direct DME synthesis using natural gas in a slurry
reactor. After operating a small pilot plant for several years, they had built a 5 TPD DME plant,
which successfully produces DME by single step reaction with a small amount of methanol.
They subsequently built and tested a 100 TPD plant successfully, at Hokkaido, Japan in 2004.
Since then, many more facilities were created. As of 2008, the production capacity of DME had
been expanded to about 80,000 TPY by the joint venture company Fuel DME Production Co.
Ltd [41].

Methanol and DME Production: Survey and Roadmap | 2017 51