Recycled emissions to alcohols, optimization process for renewable and sustainable production

Most of the world’s energy consumption comes from fossil fuels, while the least comes from decarbonized sources. The massive use of carbon-based energy sources has a negative impact on the environment due to increased greenhouse gases emissions (GHG), which cause climate change. For this reason, our ecosystem needs a fast action to reduce emissions. The international climates goals aim to achieve zero-net emissions by 2050. This requires a shift from natural fossil sources into low carbon fuels, such as renewable gases and liquid combustible.

A key element of this transition is establishing a competitive green fuels market with the necessary infrastructure, networks and use. The production of zero-net emission methanol (CH₃OH), between others, obtained from greenhouse gases emissions (GHG) (including CO₂, CH₄, and low-grade biogas) and an oxidant as green hydrogen (H₂) or nitrous oxide (N2O), is crucial for a carbon-neutral economy. So far, methanol produced to be used as a chemical building block and as a transportation fuel or as a precursor of other liquid fuels (in particular shipping, a difficult sector to decarbonize), has been traditionally produced from coal or natural gas. However, activation of light alkanes without combustion is challenging; their oxidative functionalization requires the intervention of reactive species capable of breaking apolar C-H bonds while limiting overoxidation of products that contain progressively weaker C-H bonds. This process requires efficient catalysts to lower the activation energy of the key steps of the reaction and to control the selectivity vs conversion. In this presentation, we show the development of novel technologies to produce sustainable fuels at mild conditions, drastically reducing the energy consumption. We discuss the CH₄ conversion to CH₃OH at mild conditions (up to 200 ºC) in a fixed-bed reactor under efficient catalytic and flow conditions. To validate the reactor bench design, the propane conversion reaction is firstly assessed. The kinetic parameters are studied too.