Economic analysis of methanol production from coal/biomass upgrading

Due to environmental considerations and economic crisis, more attention has been paid to produce methanol from biomass. In this paper, to simulate the methanol production from air-steam gasification of coal, biomass, and coal-biomass, an aspen plus model of gasification process has been proposed. Here, due to lack of kinetic data required for simulation of rate of reactions, an equilibrium model was used based on Gibbs free energy minimization. With plant size increasing from 200 to 400 tonnes/day, methanol selling price decreased from 13.6 to 12.5 $/gal for biomass, from 12.8 to 11.3 for coal, and from 13.1 to 11.9 $/gal for biomass-coal (50:50, w%:w%), which means that larger plant is more affordable for the production of methanol. As a result, methanol production from coal gasification was more affordable compared to biomass and biomass-coal.