Development and Validation of a Laboratory-Scale Methanol Synthesis Mini-Plant and Digital Twin Simulation

Abstract

The utilization of CO₂ is becoming increasingly important for replacing fossil resources in the chemical industry. Methanol synthesis from CO₂ and H₂ can play a key role in providing a renewable base chemical. To develop full process concepts, a methanol mini-plant was set up, accompanied by a digital twin to investigate flexible feedstocks and the recycling of unconverted reactants, including product condensation. Experimental results showed good agreement with the digital twin, using recent kinetic models enabling systematic investigation of process parameters and their influence on in-loop gas composition to identify optimal reaction and feed gas conditions. Experiments with syngas from biomass gasification were conducted to assess the feasibility of industrially relevant CO_x sources.