High yield methanol synthesis with Cu-Zn-Al catalyst in DBD: Experimental & thermochemsitry

Summary form only given: With the rapid depletion of liquid oil, the urgency of finding a new alternative energy is raising. The most visible way could be the utilization some energy resources which currently never or rarely used before, such as methane or natural gas. As handling liquid matter is preferable and safe, it is necessary to convert gas reactants into liquid products. One candidate of the products is methanol which is already presence in our daily life. Currently, the industrial methanol synthesis is done via 2-stage process. This process can be easily transformed if the effective way, i.e. single-stage process, is discovered. One of the promising tools is plasma-based process. Currently, catalytic plasma by dielectric barrier discharge has been performed in order to boost the production of methanol. By the addition of Cu-Zn-Al (CZA), the methanol production showed the highest yield compared to other research works by plasma method. Moreover, this research is a part of efforts encompassing the high production of methanol from direct methane by catalytic plasma process. The addition of CZA-based catalyst increased the methanol yield two times higher than pure plasma/thermal process. Moreover, the addition of 3^rd metal compound, such as Ga and Cr, raised the methanol yield ca. 20-25%. The increment is occurred due to two factors: (a) higher conversion of methane and (b) methanol selectivity. Compared to the original CZA catalyst, the first factor is the main reason why the methanol yield increased when Ga and Cr were added. It seems that the main mechanism of methanol synthesis is not changed where the oxide copper played an important role. Instead of methanol, the presence of Cr increased the production of C₂ hydrocarbons dominated by ethane (C₂H₆). In this paper, the thermochemistry analysis of the previous published kinetic study of methanol synthesis is also discussed.