Entire elevating temperature processes for green hydrogen coupled coal-to-methanol process: simulation and techno-economic evaluation

Chen Li, Shuai Liu, Yurui Wang, Shuang Li, Yixiang Shi, Ningsheng Cai and Xuancan Zhu

Energy, 2025, vol. 335, issue C

Abstract: The development of the traditional coal-to-methanol process has been constrained due to its high carbon emissions and low energy efficiency. In this paper, the authors proposed an entire elevating temperature process in green hydrogen production for coal to methanol process (ETGH-CTM), where the elevated temperature alkaline water electrolysis and the elevated temperature pressure swing adsorption technology were integrated to replace the water gas shift unit and the Rectisol process. The traditional coal-to-methanol (T-CTM) and green hydrogen coupled with coal-to-methanol (GH-CTM) processes were also built and validated. Each process is compared and analyzed for two gasification methods. The carbon utilization efficiency, energy utilization efficiency and economic analysis are compared to explore the advantages of the elevated temperature process. The results show that compared to T-CTM, the energy utilization efficiency increases from 49.38 %∼51.73 % to 57.47 %∼57.64 % and 58.08 %∼ 58.58 % under GH-CTM and ETGH-CTM, respectively. The carbon utilization efficiency for pulverized coal gasification rises from 44.66 %∼45.73 % to 83.00 %∼89.92 % and 94.21 %∼ 96.10 % under GH-CTM and ETGH-CTM. For economic performance, using Internal Rate of Return as the evaluation metric. Cross-comparison of coal gasification routes reveals that pulverized coal and coal-water slurry configurations yield equivalent IRR values for GH-CTM (4.07 %) and ETGH-CTM (17.48 %) processes at threshold electricity prices of 0.342 CNY/kWh and 0.336 CNY/kWh respectively. Progressive reduction in green electricity pricing beyond these thresholds confers increasingly favorable economics to the ETGH-CTM pathway.

Keywords: Coal to methanol; Elevated temperature processes; Process simulation; Sensitivity analysis; Techno-economic analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544225034218
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:energy:v:335:y:2025:i:c:s0360544225034218

DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2025.137779

Access Statistics for this article

Energy is currently edited by Henrik Lund and Mark J. Kaiser

More articles in Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().