BASF develops process for climate-friendly methanol

In Germany, with the help of BASF’s OASE gas treatment technology, no carbon dioxide should be emitted during the entire production process. The team has applied to patent a process to produce methanol without any greenhouse gas emissions. If it can be successfully implemented at an industrial scale, the entire production process – from syngas production to pure methanol – will no longer release any carbon dioxide emissions.

Typically, methanol is made from syngas, which until now has been primarily obtained from natural gas via a combination of steam and autothermal reforming. Using special catalysts, this can then be turned into crude methanol, which can be further processed after purification. In the new BASF process, the syngas is generated by partial oxidation of natural gas, which does not cause any carbon dioxide emissions and has proven to be advantageous in a study jointly conducted with Linde Engineering. The subsequent process steps – methanol synthesis and distillation – can be carried out nearly unchanged.