Abstract
The recent revolution in shale gas has presented opportunities for
distributed manufacturing of key commodity chemicals, such as methanol,
from methane. However, the conventional methane-to-methanol process is
energy intensive which negatively affects the profitability and
sustainability. We report an intensified process configuration that is
both economically attractive and environmentally sustainable. This
flowsheet is systematically discovered using the building block-based
representation and optimization methodology. The new process
configuration utilizes membrane-assisted reactive separations and can
have as much as 190% higher total annual profit compared to a
conventional configuration. Additionally, it has 57% less
CO2-equivalent greenhouse gas (GHG) emission. Such drastic improvement
highlights the advantages of building block-based computer-aided process
intensification method.