Methanol production from smelter exhaust gases

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The production of methanol from smelter exhaust is the aim of a pilot project of the Carbon2Chem initiative by Thyssenkrupp and the Federal Ministry of Research (BMBF).

history

The groundbreaking ceremony for the technical center in Duisburg took place at the beginning of November 2016 . It plays a central role in the Carbon2Chem development project. Chemicals such as ammonia and methanol are to be produced from the steel mill gases and the CO 2 contained in them. In the Carbon2Chem technical center, results from the basic research laboratories are to be transferred to an industrial scale. The technical center has a floor space of around 2600 square meters. The BMBF is investing ten million euros from the funding amount for equipping and using the technical center.

In September 2018, the first methanol production from smelter exhaust gases from the Thyssenkrupp steelworks took place in the technical center in Duisburg. The Federal Ministry of Research is funding the major Carbon2Chem project with around € 60 million. According to Thyssenkrupp, it has invested around € 34 million in the technical center. Carbon2Chem is a project coordinated by Thyssenkrupp, the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft and the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft with 15 other partners from research and industry. Carbon2Chem involves a cross-sector collaboration between steel production, power generation and chemical production. These industries employ more than 180,000 people in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia.

According to the Association for the Chemical Industry (VCI), work is being carried out on increasing the circulation of CO2 as a climate-friendly alternative.

"The direct use of CO2 as a raw material will also play a role"

- Utz Tillmann, General Manager VCI

description

Iron is produced in the blast furnace from iron ore with the addition of coke at around 1500 degrees. Since the pig iron is too brittle to be processed, the carbon content in the iron is reduced in a converter with the addition of oxygen and converted into steel. In the Carbon2Chem project, the steel mill gases produced during these processes are not to be flared or used to generate electricity as before, but instead, among other things, to be used to produce methanol. This has the advantage that less carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) is produced. The hydrogen required for this is produced with excess electricity from renewable energies , which is why the term e-methanol is often used. With the Carbon2Chem approach, 20 million tons of the annual German CO 2 emissions of the steel industry are to be made economically usable in the future. This corresponds to 10 percent of the annual CO 2 emissions from German industrial processes and the manufacturing sector.

In addition to methanol, other preliminary products containing carbon and hydrogen are obtained from the smelter exhaust gases. The energy required for the chemical processes comes from renewable sources. In the Carbon2Chem project, the exhaust gases are placed at the beginning of a planned chemical production chain that has been tested on a laboratory scale, as the smelter exhaust gases contain hydrogen, nitrogen and carbon, among other things, from which various chemical products can be manufactured.

It is estimated that it will take around ten years to develop the methanol from the Carbon2Chem project.

Partner in the R&D project

Are partners in the R&D project

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Saving the climate with exhaust gas. Press release 075/2016. Federal Ministry of Education and Research, June 27, 2016, accessed on October 11, 2018 .
  2. ↑ https://www.thyssenkrupp.com/de/unternehmen/innovation/technologien-fuer-die-energiewende/carbon2chem.html
  3. ↑ How CO2 becomes fertilizer and fuel, FAZ, Wednesday, December 5, 2018, p. 18
  4. ↑ Our Carbon2Chem project. Thyssenkrupp, accessed October 11, 2018 .

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