Bio-methanol Manufacturing Using Farming Biogas By-Products

In 2022, PuriFire Labs were approached by a traditional anaerobic digestion (AD) biogas plant (JJ Power Ltd), and other industry representatives from the agritech market to design and develop a new, more effective, highly cost-efficient approach to separating CO2 emissions from AD digestate feedstock at an AD biogas plant, this as part of the process to manufacture the bio-based material bio-methanol (green methanol).

PuriFire will use by-products from an AD biogas plant trial site to create a cost-effective, low-carbon, circular ecosystem and upgrade the outputs to produce bio-methanol, providing an alternative to the traditional manufacture. The aim is to achieve this by integrating their proprietary carbon capture and utilisation (to remove the carbon dioxide feedstock) and hydrothermal gasification (to generate the hydrogen feedstock) technologies for catalytic upgrading.

Methanol is a clear liquid chemical used in thousands of everyday products, including plastics, paints, cosmetics, and fuels/energy in marine, automotive, and electricity sectors. Methanol is traditionally produced from coal or natural gas, however, with increasing interest in sustainability, more projects are utilising renewable feedstocks such as agricultural waste, sewage, renewable electricity, and captured CO2 to produce green methanol, which can be classified as either bio-methanol or e-methanol.

Green Methanol is a clean-burning, biodegradable fuel, making it an attractive alternative fuel for powering vehicles and ships, cooking food, and heating homes.

The design of this innovative manufacturing technology/process was influenced in the feasibility and industrial research stages of this project, including end user engagement with the biogas industry and other end users including agriculture and marine (downstream market). This to ensure key stakeholders are contributing to the design thinking, delivery of the build, ensuring the product meets the requirements of these key customer groups.

This approach will be embedded in the experimental development design phases of the project going forward, including matching design and specifications to market and regulatory needs, and looking at the economic issues of potential users based in rural communities as well as in urban facilities, to ensure price-point does not exclude target markets.

This project will demonstrate how all agricultural sites, anaerobic digestion biogas plants and carbon capture facilities globally can be converted into bio-methanol manufacturing facilities.

As per our knowledge and research, there are no producers of biomethanol in the UK today. The Project will accelerate the commercialisation of low-carbon bio-methanol with PuriFire Labs as the technology provider in collaboration with leading industry partners on the upstream and downstream sides.