A COMPARATIVE STUDY ON SAFETY, EXERGETIC, AND ENVIRONMENTAL ANALYSIS FOR BIOMETHANOL VIA BIOGAS REFORMING

The energy crisis and global warming caused by fossil fuel combustion have received increasing attention in recent years. Biomethanol is a clean and environmentally friendly energy produced by reforming biogas-derived syngas. To investigate the most suitable and efficient biomethanol production process, this paper compares the biomethanol production via three different biogas reforming processes, namely steam reforming, autothermal reforming, and tri-reforming using Aspen Plus simulator through safety index, energy and exergetic, and environmental analyses. For the process performance, the tri-reforming process achieved the highest energetic and exergetic efficiencies of 63.17% and 41.24%, respectively, due to producing the highest yield of methanol. In the environmental analysis, the steam reforming of the biogas process showed the lowest CO2 emission intensity of 3.16 ton CO2/ton methanol. The major source of CO2 emission is the combustion of biogas. The Dow Fire and Explosion Index was used for the safety aspect. The biomethanol reactor was discovered to be the most hazardous equipment.