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Synthesis of Dimethyl Ether from Natural Gas: CO 2 Utilization Process

Conference Paper · November 2016

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Emmanouil Papadakis Olivia Ana Perederic

Novo Nordisk Technical University of Denmark
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Synthesis of Dimethyl Ether from Natural Gas: CO2 Utilization
Process

Alessandro Duso, Júlía Rós Hafþórsdóttir, Yiyi Cao, Emmanouil Papadakis and Olivia Ana Perederic,
Department of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering, Technical University of Denmark, DK-2800
Lyngby, Denmark

Dimethyl ether (DME) is an important chemical product which can be used as fuel, solvent, refrigerant
and aerosol. DME’s most promising application is the substitution of liquefied petroleum gas as
environmental friendly solution to the liquid fuels problem. A plant for DME production from natural
gas is designed in this work by applying the 12-tasks systematic process design method [1]. The goal of
this work is to design a sustainable and economically feasible process by utilizing global warming gas
CO2for producing a highly valuable product, DME. The conceptual process design is first performed in
the MSc-level course “Process Design: Principles and Methods” and then extended as sustainable
process design project at the Department of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering in Technical
University of Denmark.

The two main steps required to produce DME from natural gas are: syngas has to be synthesized first,
followed by a direct reaction combing production and dehydration of methanol to make DME. The
production of syngas in the first step is carried out through tri-reforming since carbon production could
be avoided and thus the catalyst is protected from poisoning. In the following step, the H2/CO ratio is
adjusted to avoid water-gas shift reaction, which makes CO2as side-product instead of water.

The whole project is divided into twelve different tasks [1], in which different design decisions are
made in a hierarchical manner. First, all the information about products and selected synthesis process
are collected and an initial processing path synthesized in tasks 1-3. Then, the preliminary design
decisions for the main design variables are made and verified through simple mass balance based
simulations in task 4. Then, both energy and mass balance are verified through a process simulator
(PROII) using simple as well as rigorous simulation models in tasks 5-7. At this point, a preliminary
synthesis-design of the process is obtained. The next tasks (8-9) involved the sizing and costing
calculations to establish a base case design. In the final tasks (10-12), the base case design is analyzed
and targeted improvements are made through optimization, heat integration, and environmental impact
analysis [2] to obtain a more sustainable and improved process design. A net carbon dioxide emission
for this process is also calculated. Based on the design, twenty thousand metric tons of DME, with a
99.7% purity, are produced per year.

In this work PROII is used for simulating the process, while ECON is applied for economic evaluation.
Also many other tools are used: ICAS [3] for additional property prediction, SustainPro [4] for
sustainability analysis and process “hot-spot” (bottleneck) identification and LCSoft [5] for lifecycle
assessment factor and environmental indicators, including the ECO efficiency indicators.

References
 [1] D. K. Babi, "Teaching Sustainable Process Design using 12 systematic Computer Aided Tasks".
Computer Aided Chemical Engineering, 2015, vol. 37, pp. 173-178.

[2] L. T. Biegler, I. E. Grossmann, and A. W. Westerberg, Systematic methods of chemical process

design. 1997.

[3] R. Gani, G. Hytoft, C. Jaksland, and A. K. Jensen, “An integrated computer aided system for
integrated design of chemical processes”. Comput. Chem. Eng. Jul. 1997, vol. 21, no. 10, pp. 1135–
1146.

[4] A. Carvalho, H. A. Matos, and R. Gani, “SustainPro—A tool for systematic process analysis,
generation and evaluation of sustainable design alternatives”. Comput. Chem. Eng.Mar. 2013, vol. 50,
pp. 8–27.

[5] S. Kalakul, P. Malakul, K. Siemanond, and R. Gani, “Integration of life cycle assessment software
with tools for economic and sustainability analyses and process simulation for sustainable process
design”. J. Clean. Prod.May 2014, vol. 71, pp. 98–109.

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