Analysis of "green methanol" production from carbon dioxide acquired from negative emission power plants using CFD approach for catalytic reactor

The growing global demand for energy, coupled with the urgent need to reduce carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions, has led to the development of innovative energy cycles such as the negative CO₂ gas power plant (nCO2PP). Carbon dioxide storage and reuse in current industries is therefore becoming an important issue. The answer to this is the process of synthesizing methanol, commonly used in many industries from captured carbon dioxide and hydrogen from electrolysis. Methanol synthesis, a key process in such systems, relies heavily on the use of catalysts, offering significant research opportunities not only in catalyst chemistry, but also in optimizing reactor design and process parameters such as temperature, feed velocity and operating pressure.
In this study, the effect of process parameters, in particular pressure and velocity, on the production of green methanol from CO₂ captured in a negative cycle CO₂ power plant was investigated. A computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis was performed, incorporating a user-defined function (UDF) into commercial CFD software, a novel approach in this context. Simulation results showed a methanol yield of 4–10 % at the reactor outlet, which compares favourably with existing literature, indicating the potential for further optimisation and application in industrial methanol production.