[00:00:05]
>> Today I'm happy to introduce Dr Christian Richter who's here from the University of Iceland Dr Richter has a long and very history you know through a lot of research topics ranging from electric chair it's really up to process and plant design and she's going to talk about today he also has been through a lot of the experiences in his career he did his Ph D. had more of these started call by post doc at Yale and who is actually the power of the member of the Chemical Engineering Department at the Russell Rochester Institute of Technology after that he moved on I guess he got the bug for pounding Himachal engineering departments because he was also the founding member of the Chemical Engineering Department at the university and.

[00:00:44]
This is also the 1st chemical engineering department in Iceland so I think that Dr Richter holds the title of the 1st chemical engineering professor Icelandic history so we're very honored to have him here today and I'll let him tell you about methanol. Thank you very much. So I'm really here to tell you about one bit of good news when it comes to C O 2 and global warming and we don't hear good news often so that's great but it turns out there is another bit of good news I can tell you about which is not really what I want to talk about but 2 things tooth good things have recently happened so I'm going to share both of you.

[00:01:20]
Both of these things one quickly and then the other one would be the main topic of of the stock so of course all of most of you know but let's just. What we know and that is that if you want to do something about C O 2 there's basically one of 2 solutions if you don't want to release it into the air you that we have to sequester it on the ground or even more ideally you want to use it as a feed stock and make stuff out of it OK And so the 1st bit of good news to sequestration and there has been a demonstration in Iceland the last 5 years called Corp fix and here is what it happened at the headless Heidi do thermal plant.

[00:02:00]
Essentially to understand. Even what you can talk about later you need to know a little bit about geothermal energy and that is essentially that you take steam. Sure which one to point but how do this one you know to take steam from underground and then the 1st that you do is because it comes up a conflict on solids that you don't want in your geothermal turbines so you basically have a collection tank where you lay the solids and the gases separate so you get a brine solution and then the steam is what drives the turbines but this steam unlike the 1st approximation you might think of it is 100 percent water but it's not it's 99 percent water biomass approximately in one percent gas and that gas is mostly C O 2 and so what most geothermal.

[00:02:47]
Thermal power plants around the world do with that C O 2 is they simply release it because it's not that much technically. Electricity not 100 percent green but it's still a lot. Methane or coal but anyway so what this particular experiment in this is really more of an experiment that is the idea was to reinject to see if we can really inject the C O 2 because of the geothermal power plant really want to use the heat from sustainably and it's really a chemical engineering problem because it really means 2 things a mass balance an energy balance on the do thermal fluid that you extract to do thermal plants always reinject some of the water and they do a lot of measurements at Wells all around to make sure that they're not taking too much water and too much energy that they basically have on this this resource it's the state so because you have all these measurement wells you could actually quite accurately track what happens on the ground at the site and so the idea was to reinject the C O 2 and so that requires just one of the simple chemical engineer in the operation basically a scrub or so what it does this is not normally the geothermal plan but this particular plan that all of the distinguished to the 3rd wind the water is mostly liquid and the C O 2 is gas and that's the other thing that's of course important to talk like that is a relatively pure C O 2 stream.

[00:04:03]
Most oil natural gas and steam coming from are also a little bit of hydrogen sulfide and it's mostly C O 2. With a little bit of hydrogen sulfide and then what you want to do is you want to dissolve a significant fraction of this in water and so you just have one scrub or absorption column where you basically put the C O 2 and H 2 is your bubble from the bottom water gets played from the top.

[00:04:24]
The actual scrubber that's been used in this operation and then this was injected and I don't want to talk about this long just give you the good news the surprising good news was that at this particular site as you can see the summary there in the in the more interesting one is the C O 2 within one year about 50 percent of the C O 2 was mineralized turned into rock and that is a surprise because most people would expect making rocks takes thousands of years and you're not wrong usually it does or even longer but what.

[00:04:55]
They were a little bit for to it is they had just the right combination of a certain kind of rock or we in Iceland have called basalt which is relatively soluble and then the other law I think is more like than Western the fact that the H 2 S. was there makes the solution that you reinjected quite acidic in the sense that it dissolved disperse all the rock and then it recruits the lies this and essentially and you could this is sort of known that this could happen in a while but this is the 1st time that it was actually done out on scale and observed so of course I am not going to talk about this in detail but if you want to know the detail there is the papers if you just Google cart fix you would find the literature on it.

[00:05:35]
Early way so that was the 1st cool thing that happened but the 2nd cool thing is actually much less known and that's the one that I'll talk about now and this is. On the utilization of carbon front. So. This is sort of the introductory way to think of it before I went to Iceland here in the U.S. I was working in the same field for a long time and this is how we used to think of the problem of trying to make something a C O 2 uses feedstock we look at the gives energy and we see a minus for a promotion for C O 2 and then we look at something else that is stable it's sort of the end product of for example combustion water and we see that C O 2 is almost twice as stable water and then you look at something which is.

[00:06:22]
Typically a feedstocks molecule that we consider reactive and we see that C O 2 is 3 times more stable uphill. And that's just not going to be so easy to use E O 2 and if you look at the fuel something as a source of energy like methane it's 8 times more stable so many scientists and me included when I used to think of this problem we have to admit to ourselves that we are trying to use the O.T. to make stuff you are trying to do something that would be hard but that would require a lot of energy just by the fundamental science and if you find is that there is a logical conclusions one of 3 that one of these 3 things must be true one is we're actually trying to do something that's impossible or solely because it's just take so much energy or be it could be that it's possible to do this but it requires some great technology new catalyst new discoveries something somebody really clever to come along and there's a 3rd possibility and that is that we are all the exclusive club chemical engineering with the know how of our field and our profession if we were to apply it to this problem we could actually do this one of these 3 things are true and I have to admit until recently moved to Iceland I really thought it would be and we've got proposals to deal in.

[00:07:39]
Trying to find solutions and secretly some of us suspect it might be a Course we need to get grants. Th Decent do something but what the main point of my talk is. I think the demonstration that recently happened really suggest it's see one of my at least methanol out of C O 2 it is not as hard as most people think and it can be done with the stuff that you guys learn about then your separations your reaction engineering your person design course that is enough no if you just get out there and try it.

[00:08:12]
To make fuel from C O 2 to recycle C O 2 just to put it in perspective. This achievement. Something that I didn't know before I started giving the stalk it turns out if you. Look at the Internet but you can talk to some Jew physicists and they say it's not it's not it's reliable if you look at Earth's early history surface about 5500000000 years old and there were a lot more C O 2 in the atmosphere actually done now or there were no life.

[00:08:44]
So this here is the 1st a bit as blank because we have to extrapolate backwards but most YEAR FOR THIS IS think the Earth's atmosphere was actually 80 to 90 percent or even slightly more C O 2 and so where did that all that go How was that there from valid turns out there wasn't plants will think plants you see plants will come later it is just that we are at the very fortuitous position of the sun we all know that that's also why we have life and so we have a water cycle where it basically water evaporates and dissolves some C O 2 and that rains and this cycle over billions of years was actually how most of the C O 2 was removed from the atmosphere and it ended up in the rocks and then of course next.

[00:09:21]
Plants and that gave us 2 things we took the C O 2 little from about one percent to $400.00 ppm very small because the plant started consuming the last little bit and it also of course gave us oxygen. The plants as you can see and then something we have oxygen.

[00:09:38]
Here would be the blue is the oxygen levels that go higher in the C O 2 levels that in the $400.00 ppm are sort of $280.00 ppm that's where plants got us before the Industrial Revolution OK And so this is sort of a really chemical engineering thing to do an inventor of where today on Earth what is the carbon and this is in billions of tons and she can see in the air there are 720000000000 tons of carbon approximately in the Earth's atmosphere there's no way way way more than all the rocks which you know understand why because it was some of it was already there in the beginning of course and earlier but even more was at the human level.

[00:10:14]
And then still way more than the air is and all the fossil fuels most of those fossil fuels are not what we call exploitable they could be so deep somewhere that we will never do but a significant fraction of this is exploitable and you can immediately see that this number compared it was really big so if we really were to take out all of the C O 2 carbon and put it in the from sittin there it will really make a big difference and then of course there's the other thing we have chemical engineers like to do a mass balance how is the carbon flowing in you can see the significant flow exchanged between the earth and in between the ocean in the air but it's roughly maybe not precisely since there's fires in the Amazon as in the news now and that will throw the balance of slightly for the balance over here.

[00:10:56]
Pointers finity this balance of the year might be slightly of of this a lot of fire in a year or not but it's roughly this isn't steady state in this is that you state the only thing that is not a steady state is this and this number is roughly accurate you can see this number that is not insignificant compared to this month so this is us human beings chemicals and we have to some degree doing what we do we know how the crude oil and not just make gasoline but make all kinds of products but as we all know this is the price we pay for it we are slowly reversing what plants of that in this last few 100000000 years slowly reversing it in a not insignificant way and this is the curve that almost every dog begin with you can see there are therefore we went from that 280 ppm that plants left us with to around $400.00 ppm right now.

[00:11:41]
And so to all you all this again because it kind of puts what I'm going to tell you next in the kind of a nice perspective I'm going to show you now the 1st plant we have on Earth where we are not we're doing chemical engineering and making stuff just like we always did but we are not taking fossil fuel from the putting it out there we're actually doing exactly what I do so it's a plant that is a plant or a factory that really does what plans do in the sense that this back that it takes an SEO to add water and it makes a fuel just like plants do it so happens it also gives out oxygen and if it was in use then we probably would have found a way to use that oxygen because it has some value in ice and there isn't so it just releases the oxygen.

[00:12:22]
There is the number of spaces and it's not small it's not insignificant it's to make money and it's commercial it's viable so every year this plan that I'm going to show you and talk about in the rest of the talk makes. About $4600.00 tons of methanol and all of that up there but in the process it takes in $5500.00 ton of C O 2 which would have ended up in the atmosphere which then disappears if you like and it releases 3100 tons of oxygen so yeah the 1st it looks like any other plant or factory but it is actually doing what plans do and that's why sort of.

[00:12:57]
Picture we can maybe if we want to be celebrated it's a step in human evolution and it is. Part of our good of the universe for plants do but now we can also. Do what plans do so where did it happen there is where I live that the city of right of economic advice learnt that if you were to come visit you would fly into Jeff living it is 45 minutes from the capital Why is it so for the US Air Force you can blame them they build a beautiful Air Base and then the ice in the now I just use it for aviation and then I just give it out this is a good reference point the plans are going to talking about now is just about 10 minutes from from the from the airport the my the reason is and I will get to that soon.

[00:13:40]
Or maybe another interesting fact is there is also the famous lagoon resort anybody had ever been to the blue room is big enough that there's a chance yeah I want to. Do you do a little going to resort. Yes you can have a drink you can put beautiful select on your face so that you guys know what the blue actually is.

[00:14:00]
That they tell you OK So I'll tell you guys now but you have to promise not to tell anybody else because I want to keep it secret the going is actually the waste born from the beautiful plant right behind it but don't tell anybody because we really still want all the tourists to go but this is a geothermal power plant so it's basically a steam it is steam that came from Earth and it has had natural beautiful silica which is supposedly really good for your face OK So and then as you can guess for the same reason this plan I'm going to talk about now both of these things basically feed of the power plant or as related to it so the C.R.I. of the carbon recycling International plant that I'm going to talk about there is also right next to it there is just the numbers but I sort of said it again so I won't belabor it I just make the point that overall chemistry of the plant is a came to 2 plants dating in C O 2 taking in water producing hydrocarbon sometime in this particular case of how the carbon fuel methanol and releasing oxygen.

[00:14:58]
The only thing that you might say is different plants use solar energy this used thermal electricity but of course you can use on the palace for your city in the new duplicate that but if you really like solar. And the plan that's been operating for now for 70 years 67 there is the numbers so that it's not a little experiment It's not subsidized by government it's a private company a little startup company and their goal is to make money.

[00:15:25]
And there is sort of the quick history will say a little bit more about it now. Sort of reshuffled the stalk the way you usually do it I'm going to start to talk about the palaces the reaction engineering 1st. But I'll just mention this the company was started by 3 guys and slightly embarrassing thing is none of them are chemical engineers but they did chemical engineering so I suggest you guys can lay to the side of should we let them into our club because they did something special and it is although they may not be chemical engineer these chemical engineer so the 3 guys who were 2 guys that met in university of this one ice than.

[00:16:02]
This 11 American this one and they are not equal engineers and pilots and drinking buddies and they came up with this crazy idea and they went and they spoke to a physical chemist this guy or that encodes and. Basically And I think many people really had the idea just as many not many people acted on it and that's the world's cheapest electricity a lot of waste heat there's relatively pure form of C O 2 that explained to you later and so the ideas can be combined these things and make something and make money.

[00:16:35]
Turns out that they convince them the physical chemist and that's how the companies start they got themselves a finance guy from MIT. That's the story now here's the 1st part of my talk how does it work and why does it work now are you going to see the real point line it's surprisingly much cheaper and easier to do than most people thought this is what we learn from this demonstration but let me get into the details of that a bit in 2006 and I heard that you guys had as a design problem or some of you or the guys had graduated and so I would not blame and I think most people in your design problem they would have done it by 8 I mean take C O 2 and make methanol you would have would do it the same as Option one because option one is sort of the obvious way for a chemical engineer to make methanol we can take 2 known reactions the 1st one being the.

[00:17:25]
Shift reaction to new and reverse reversal the shift to make the C O 2 into carbon monoxide and what that and then will soon talk about how methanol is being made today the finery and that's the 2nd reaction that you take or when one side makes methanol So in with 2 reactors and 2 steps we already knew 50 years ago that we can do this this would be the obvious way to do it and then of course an alternative step where you by just even ask yourself maybe we can just take the C O 2 and directly arginine it in one reaction and make water if you were to look at the literature in 2006 or even to some degree now because what I'm telling you is not that widely known even since this plan has been running since 2012 the literature would tell you Option one will work in option 2 will not work but as I'm going to show you know Option 2 works amazingly well and that's one of the reasons why this is relatively much cheaper than people thought it would be OK So let's dig a little bit into was what why why everything I said Now if you had your design course you may know what this is called a pew chart and industry often when people have to design a factory and make a decision they do something like this they basically write all the different options and then they see what's desirable you know what do they want should be cheap it should be safe whatever if you were to make a pitch out in 2006 for these 2 alternative ways of doing it this is how it would look it looks like the literature says 2 step work is existing technology some look to it you just put the pieces together differently.

[00:18:53]
The 1st. You'd be making one oxide which you can make other things from so that's flexible and then the what the 2nd one it had in favor of it was only that it requires less reactors basically. So I'm going to discuss quickly what I mean by close to existing.

[00:19:16]
Technology by just looking a little bit at how our methanol commercial metal plants work. So. Basically motivate that state and there. No metal industry some of you know and for those who don't it's actually really big you can see 100000000 tons a year you know. Billions of dollars and many people work in it and the other interesting side to this how is in my overwhelming from natural gas 10 percent of it is made from coal that's just in China and it's when we'll show you a graph of course later it's actually more expensive to do but it's subsidized what they have in China and the existing infrastructure but so mostly it's made from ethanol gas and you can see even understand the process you have the option of injecting a little bit of C O 2 and producing a little bit more it's not done often but technically that's already a preexisting way you could utilize.

[00:20:16]
OK So this is the standard methanol plants how methanol is made from methane you can see the 1st step is you have to gasify the methane with a gasifier gasifier runs typically about $8900.00 Celsius and that's the 1st reaction in the bot there is one here and then the 2nd step is then to take the carbon monoxide reactive to more hydrogen and you get your methanol and that's done in these conditions.

[00:20:44]
So the 1st question that you get 3 varieties of methanol plants and it all has to do with this if you just do the 1st reaction and you ignore the water at the action you will get 3 hydrogen is for every car on one of the sides but if you look at this reaction you need only 2 so there is 3 different things you can do with your extra hydrogen and 3 different kinds of methanol plants because of that.

[00:21:09]
And they are you can remove the excess Arjen and burn it because you can see you need. To move the temperature but you need heat to do the gasification So that's the obvious thing that all this thing and many plants will do that the 2nd thing is you can.

[00:21:23]
Inject C O 2 and use the reverse for the gas shift. To basically consume the extra hydrogen and make a little of its. Until you have this 2 to one ratio here. This is the least common thing but there are some plans to do that and so they are slightly already using C O 2 as a stock but just not entirely and then the 3rd thing is the one that turns out for big clients and these days all these plans are really big has the best economics is called thermal reforming and that means when you have a plant so big having air separation unit the precious wing of the ocean unit where you.

[00:21:58]
Oxygen out from the air and then you put some oxygen into your gas supplier and you partially basically combust the methane to C.E.O. So what happens then is you get less heat from the combustion but you also make less either if you just could not because if you use the water you get hydrogen if you use oxygen you get more energy but less hydrogen and then you basically end up with the right ratio OK So so that's how basically most methanol is being made today so let's quickly jump back now that 1st option that we had the 1st way that we could potentially go from C O 2 to methanol you can see that it is very some of that it is just remove the gas and completely feed in C O 2 and just do the water gas shift and then this reactor is identical that's why.

[00:22:49]
Motivate the statement that option one is close to the existing technology. So. I don't want to talk too long about this just to save a bit of time. Just say this now this is no you can this has been done in the lab of course but it's also known in methanol plants maybe I should go so we spoke a little bit of how to get the right ratio of hydrogen to carbon monoxide to make methanol the one you might also ask yourself even a stand of plant how much you 2 do you want to go into this reactor because you see this reaction doesn't do it it would appear that C O 2 is just a waste so for example if you do this rather get shot maybe you should shift it all the way you have more C O you get more methanol that the most obvious logic to follow but when they have run this in the industry or if you're on this in the lab this is what your reaction right conversion curve looks like if you feed no C O 2 into that 2nd reactor then the reaction rate is $100.00 times slower than it is compared to about 5 to 10 percent of C. it so basically that reaction that you want to the right of making methanol is on the times faster if you have some C O 2 around that was originally a mystery but of course in industry people don't spend too much time thinking about mysteries they just heed this and all methanol plants are operated with not feet into the 2nd act that they.

[00:24:15]
Have 5 to 10 percent C O 2 into the 2nd. Of course we're going to we can ask ourselves why and actually relate to the success of this cotton plant in a moment but this was the 1st hint that something was up. Not going to do much at this time.

[00:24:38]
So as I've already suggested many times and thereby won't be here if it didn't happen the Icelanders. Try to once they've tried one reactor in fact it was not inside but it was locked because they had only one reactor and then the financial crisis happened as you can see we're talking about 2009 and they were struggling to get money for more and they started playing with the $1.00 they are realistic and make it to work so that OK So they found that you can't just put C O 2 in with 3 hydrogen and you can get really surprisingly good conversion to methanol So the question is why does it work.

[00:25:18]
Or why is this true and the catalyst. Is not officially known of course because a company was secrets but you can infer you'll see the conditions is very similar so it's certainly probably a formulation of the exact same catalyst that works well in the standard industry which is that see that copper zinc oxide on aluminum OK And then the facts are that even in this this particular company that just like in Star little sentence is the catalyst action selectivity at the right conditions which is going to be a moment again.

[00:25:51]
And to not only Celsius it's almost 100 percent meaning you make only methanol not other things the reaction right is reasonable so the single pass conversion is about 20 percent but you can always look back as all of you know that's not a big problem if you have great said activity to just loop something so that the overall conversion is approximately 100 percent at least of the valuable thing which is the hydrogen and the stability is perfectly acceptable about between 3 and 5 years it needs replacement in the commercial plant will show you so the question is why did this one step thing work and it also actually answers a longstanding mystery.

[00:26:28]
As to why is that even when you say I want to make methanol from carbon monoxide it's better. By up to 100 times in terms of reaction rate to have some C O T C O 2 around. OK 1st I will usually mention this in 9095 already in the literature this was research by somebody called him and his group and essentially what they've done is they have just looked at this reaction meaning the standard methanol synthesis route and they used isotope labeled C O 2 so the oxygen as an oxygen 18 as opposed to the carbon one of the.

[00:27:09]
Regular or in 16 so you can see from the data. In the old days of typewriters and so forth this is not the clearest but you can see even though there's only a small amount of C O 2 in the reactor and a large amount of C O the C O 2 concentration falls rapidly and the C.E.O. concentration falls much more slowly and then this opera line here is methanol made with the oxygen being labeled So things really the impression is this is methanol where the oxygen came from C O 2 and then you make much less methanol where the oxygen is not labeled.

[00:27:42]
OK And so I used to give this talk and say it's obvious people should have known that. Even in the standard process the methanol comes from the C O 2 or 3 C O 2 but more recently thought that that can read the paper more carefully and of course the basic idea some you label C O 2 you not label C.E.O. and you see where's the label of the methanol as the label or not the reality of the experiment is a bit more tricky because you can have what is called oxygen exchange so the label oxygen from a label C O 2 can climb over to a C.E.O. So now you have a light so you basically.

[00:28:18]
Get it wrong labelled C O 2 C O. Yeah so basically you know of a carbon monoxide that's labeled so you can see that and then even more so there's a change with the catalyst so the catalyst unlabeled oxygen and that could exchange with a labeled once and now you can get another label to do so you can see things clearly did scrambled up pretty quickly and that's why this experiment is not so clean why.

[00:28:43]
You'll see now we're going to get to the evidence suggests strongly that most of the methanol is made from C O 2 but you still had some methanol in this experiment without a label because of this mixing of scrambly And then there's also the water reaction that we distribute So unfortunately it's not so obvious but it was a strong hint that what what this particular paper and this is much newer work $21627.00 there was a couple of finds papers and so forth this is from the biggest group.

[00:29:13]
Almost National Lab and I was at Columbia University a couple of days ago and they said no he's from us I think he's got. Both But essentially this is basic theory plus spectroscopy and where people know. Something if you did the so what is this let's quickly look at what this is some of you who does theory would know what this is the rest may not essentially over here we.

[00:29:38]
We are looking at one particular site and then there's this paper there's many get out from many different sites on the catalyst and we're looking at ways that we can go between. The C.E.O. And I think with an arrow for it. So there is 1st of carbon monoxide that's absorbed and then in the end up with methanol on the right.

[00:29:59]
Methanol over here carbon monoxide So this is one pathway that's been simulated in energy has been calculated for all the intermediate states and then the other possibilities you can start with C O 2 over here and you can get to methanol here and the short and long of the story is both the spectroscopy suggest that we're going through the C O 2 and in the root in the intermediates what you get is the once a year and the theory suggests show why and the reason is these barriers are much lower and this is significant this is the.

[00:30:31]
Age is not here one thing that does but if you do if you actually calculate the uncertainties in these types of calculations but these the highest peak over here for the C O 2 mechanism is more than a half an even lower than the highest peak from the C O 2 or in other words if you absorb C O 2 this year 2 can make it to methanol but he has to climb a mountain that so much higher and it is even more the uncertainties that these type of calculations inevitably have so what does this mean it means that really most of your metal will be made from C O 2 and what has happened is by coincidence Dyson There's a saying surely feeding in C O 2 in making methanol and what we now know and what was not even known in 2006 based on this result is that most likely mean the vast majority of the methanol that 100000000 tonnes a year down made a lot of what happens in those reactors is the following This is.

[00:31:27]
A copper zinc oxide on alumina catalysis kind of a complicated one it's got many sites so it's happens to be the right one because it's got other sites not the site where the water gets shipped reaction can happen so basically this C.E.O. gets water gets shifted to C O 2 this is probably the majority of the mine pathway and then the C O 2 goes to methanol in other words.

[00:31:51]
Even when we say we make methanol from C O 2 C O 2 from C.E.O. carbon monoxide C O 2 seems to be an intermediary and maybe we overestimate what a big problem this gives energy stunnel conditions is it's not always as big a thing as it superficially appears as big a barrier.

[00:32:08]
Just sort of the cycle so this is what basically happens in the reactor and this is sort of where the evidence is which I just kind of summarized. For that and so what happened in Iceland people were just more lucky than wise maybe but they made a reactor where they just fed in the sea or do you need to tweak the conditions a little bit more because you can have more water if you feed in C O 2 than not but at slightly higher temperature slightly higher pressure that's not a problem and the reactor a pretty pretty good so good that's what they discovered when they played in.

[00:32:40]
20092010 then. Basically got finance based on the results and their optimism the plan has been running since 2012 Let's quickly go over what the process is because it's remarkably simple That's the other thing. To do to go from C O 2 to methanol So of course. The other thing that you need though hydrogen and we'll end with that again and Iceland because the electricity is relatively cheap and it's green that's a good place to do this one of the most economical places and so you take what I knew but at electricity and yes there's a good oxygen which is nice and they just release which in other places you could potentially use and then that hydrogen you look at a plant to us I just tell people where it is maybe less importance of this is this is the plant the size of the plant and then there is a little building there with electrolyzers in it.

[00:33:36]
And then. As I said the C O 2 compared to most other sources are cleaner but there is still some margin so far in there which will be bad news for the catalyst so you use a very standard which you probably will learn about in your separations course coping with.

[00:33:50]
With a mind solvents to remove. The sea it is then clean enough. Left of impurities that you can compress it. Will be in a plant or just another other room with them and talk about a compressor but there's a compressor room and also a scrubbing system which. Is basically there.

[00:34:15]
And then it gets compressed to 80 bar which is just slightly higher than the typical methanol plant and then there is a single reactor that operates at around $270.00 Celsius and the overall conversion is 99 not a single pass but the overall collectivity in conversion is 99 percent because any on the reactive hydrogen you would just recycle it on the acted C O 2 and then basically what it comes out of the reactor that will very last step.

[00:34:42]
Is. To explain the last that you can see what's kind of interesting or sweet about this process is because of the high selective the only one thing happens sear to give you one methanol and one water so you end up with a mixture that by mole is 50 percent ethanol 50 percent hydrogen moment you get aspirin is a nice one to put in you can play with it you can see it's a really easy one to distill to $99.00 or 99.5 percent purity methane or whatever you want and.

[00:35:10]
Basically they need one distillation column in this particular paper that explain to you why they used to because it's more energy efficient with some heat exchange to used to so basically as one of the active into distillation columns in this plant that is what that little plant is I've shown you know a couple of pictures but it's actually remarkably simple which is really to take a story to to do this.

[00:35:32]
People will and I would if I didn't tell you wonder what do they do with this methanol I went rather quickly but you can see methanol is a massive market moat most of that methanol gets converted into a right of other other chemical products. This particular. Lasting even talk about economics this methanol is about twice as expensive making methanol in this way with this plant in Iceland is about twice as expensive Still it appeared to buy methanol from a fine idea and used it in or Pennsylvania or Saudi Arabia so they can't sell it on the open market it's too expensive nobody would buy it so you need people who will pay double because it's green and they've so far found 3 customers one is.

[00:36:14]
You know what the beautification a municipality in Norway because methanol stimulates microorganisms in water purification and those people there say we will buy more long as we have been so rich that they can do that there's a German plastic manufacturer wants to label this is probably the new plastics and then finally there's a pilot program and that's probably the biggest potential.

[00:36:36]
Wants to do the same thing with methanol that is done with ethanol in the in the U.S. It works versa. The same way you can have a blend that is 10 percent methanol 90 percent gasoline on the gasoline and you can run it in your standard core and it works the experts say just slightly better not worse.

[00:36:56]
So there's a pilot program for that that's what they do right now. So then let's come for the 1st lesson that we can learn with as it turns out by them astray should and now sort of after the fact we also understand by theory that you could you have the 2 step option of the one step option but the once the option works great so you really would want to go with that it's going to mix is better then secondly.

[00:37:22]
The other surprise is that the overall cost of the process is. Totally new still much cheaper than using methane but much closer than most people thought if you if you were to ask me without being an expert of people that haven't calculated this they would say maybe it's going to be 10 to 100 times more expensive to take C O 2 and making ethanol people and she in a moment actually did some calculations got more that maybe between 4 and then tubs and the actual reality is 2 times because people could not have known these things that I told you today you know it was known that you can use a single reactor in the reactor will be more only mildly actually cheaper and so.

[00:37:58]
This is a graph on this saw I extract as we have the size of plants or the capacity how many thousands of tons of methanol that they produce and then on this axis we have the price per ton OK And this is where the market price is it fluctuates like all things made from natural gas it's on the low in now because natural gas is cheap OK And then the different colors represent making the methanol from different stocks so the coal and natural gas is pretty much based on industry data because that's how it's made the C O 2 results this is from a review by somebody called George.

[00:38:35]
Who got the Nobel Prize for this idea of having an economy that was running on methanol and a cycle because of course if you put the method right if you release the O 2 but if you make your methanol from cedar to you at least in a sustainable cycle you're not making the C O 2 more or less so that's what he's famous for and in this is groups calculations and a collection of actually many other articles some of some of the on some of the other people's estimates but you can see what people estimated would be the cost for different size C O 2 methanol plant is light blue ones and then you can also make methanol from biomass So there I put a dog that is what the this company this is the size of the plan I just showed you really on the small it for commercial plant and this is the price they're selling it for we know the production Blois is below it but not precisely how much because this is a private company.

[00:39:25]
So then I'm going to do something which some people complain about but I'm going to do it anyway and you're going to draw occur through the average values of the ethanol from coal and making methanol from natural gas and you can see that there's an economy of scale and that's why if you google it up and you'll see that all the new plants being brought that on this or the really big clients because that's the only way that you can really make money on the sell the other guys and you can see that the methanol plan that we are looking at no one that it's so expensive it's really too small it doesn't have this economy of scale so if you then assume this is not completely right but we're somewhere in that range and we will have the same economy of scale and you have to if you think because I want to the very 1st time I gave this talk I said it in there was a German guy who said no you cannot do that I don't believe that so I thought about a bit more you'll see that the plants are very similar it's only on the front end of the for the standard metal plug you've got the pressure swing absorption unit and a gasifier for the methanol plant you've got a story for the C O 2 to methanol.

[00:40:27]
Instead of those 2 things you've got an electrolyte So that's really the 2 things that are different the rest of the plant are very similar not exactly but very similar so I think it's probably not too wrong to say that it was in the same way. But we're not sure but certainly as a 1st order approximation I think it's good so the takeaway is it's really it could be really close already to the cost to make methanol from coal which is done on the large scale and.

[00:40:58]
More that it's subsidy and we're not so far from bringing it even closer to methane making it from methane which of course depends heavily on the price of methane so it can move for them so bottom line is how can we do even better how can we make this really economical so that it could be done on a large scale and the world will be a little better the 1st one is obvious a drought in front of you does need to be bigger just build bigger plants.

[00:41:24]
Requires politics and financing and you know one there are a 10 times bigger plant in Norway is in the works it's the it's the financing is there the design is there it's just waiting for regulator the approval which probably will come so the next plan the next dot like this would be moving it up 10 times bigger from the 5 to the OK the 2nd there is no only one other way that we can make this much more economical and that has to do with this is called liberalize cost so we make a diagram we've got to calculate which things contribute to the cost of the methanol for this C O $2.00 to methanol plant you will see this pink thing dominate over the capital cost over any of the other operating costs and it's $1.00 thing it's electricity another electricity overwhelming you go only one place and that's an electrolyzer the electrolysis is a relatively expensive way to make hydrogen.

[00:42:17]
So and So let's look a little bit a little this is this is the world's 3 biggest electrolyzer company companies and there are 2 things in common the 1st thing is none of them is in USA So this one here any Norwegian Cup is the all this one.

[00:42:35]
A U.S. company when I add it up there it is brought on site so that's still really all U.S. people and U.S. based and everything it's the PM company in the U.S. and some of some people here work with them so I think it's a little bit of a cheat there's still here and they just have these people just wanted to bet on both horses the alkaline in the.

[00:42:54]
So I'd rather not a big company as upon something called group and they are really big because they're the biggest player in the chloralkali business which is maybe the biggest Maybe it is the biggest selective chemical manufacturing that's out there right now and then there's the company called Siemens.

[00:43:11]
So for this couple you could say they're all is this one is the largest and then this one is called German engineering imprecision so I'll say they're trying to find their German and their German OK so the other thing they have in common all the selected lies of their flocks of electrolyzers of show you here they are only 70 percent efficient what that means is if you put in electricity to make either immediately 30 percent of that beautiful green electricity which you might have solar wind or in the case of Iceland you thermally you immediately throw it away again it becomes heat.

[00:43:45]
That would be the key way. I should sort of aside if you're not going to be nice and you get you C O 2 from a coal plant or something else also the separation of that C O 2 that's the other big chemical engineering challenge that we're working on so.

[00:44:00]
The cleaning of the C O 2 from various sources or from the air and making electrolysis more efficient I would say does the remaining 2 big challenges. In this business you get 3 kinds of electrolyzers I'll just show you there. 2 of them works at 90 Celsius typically the alkaline in the PM and the other kinds called the solid oxide so you can electrolyte steam but it's got ceramics or solid oxide membranes and they only work typically about 700 Celsius so really when I say one way there's 2 ways to make this better the one is make better membranes and that's why I'm here.

[00:44:43]
Paul. I just met Paul today about the poor slap has a really really promising membrane for lowering So when we say these things out 70 percent of patients we throw 30 percent away most of that go into something called the over potential and. A lot basically have a set up where they show that they could operate with a much lower over potentials so suddenly either we would have to find a new member in these companies that haven't really been able to move on this I mean we've been stuck at 70 percent for more than through the decades and there is big projects in Europe like Siemens for example of a big project in Austria and they essentially using the 70 percent efficient electrolyzers So that's what we are hoping next to make progress and it will either require something new what you guys are working in Georgia Tech and really that's why I'm here and the other idea we have but we're not sure we can make it work is to do it across as a higher temperature so if you go to a higher temperature I'll show you here this is just a term of the mix and this is actually if you go to gas it looks even better so this is one atmosphere this whole diagram of one atmosphere if you do it at 80 atmosphere where needs it that it stays of course gas longer and then this line over here and actually really make this and.

[00:45:58]
So if you keep things liquid by working at a higher pressure you get if you go to 2 to 3 on that and maybe I should just put this in you get a century from the thermodynamics you use less electricity and more heat so you middle again 10 percent and then usually the kinetics gets faster there is some evidence that it would work for this particular set up but.

[00:46:19]
We would love to prove it the main problem is no membrane exists that's why sort of there the problem is the membrane there is no membrane that people have really tried people know what I'm saying on the 1st one but today there is really no polymer that can survive above $150.00 Celsius and the ceramic ones people of Freud to use them at low temperatures but they're not conductive the nuff So you start losing so there really is no other one of them telling you the temp.

[00:46:42]
There's the obvious solution on the other and this is what this means there is a gap where there is no membranes there's membranes that can operate out here as members are going operate down here but we don't have any in the middle and we want to operate right here it's also good not to price them because we basically have geothermal heat in that range so we can get it for the Arts the future I didn't really I want to tell you there is great news if you want to turn carbon into rocks it just takes up to a year if you have the right conditions and it's been proven experimental in the field good news number one if you want to take C O 2 to make methane all it turns out it's quite a bit cheaper than most people would think great news but I don't want to sound like there's nothing for us left to do.

[00:47:24]
There is for us typical engineers to challenge as I see both of these as typical generic that it is the one is electrolysis being so inefficient. It's not ideal and it would be great if we can move on that and then the 2nd one is if you want to not just use geothermal C O 2 but you want to use power plant C O 2 or C O 2 in many different industries aluminum industry and then there's a bit more of a complicated purification problem on the front end of the slope of land.

[00:47:53]
Away so I'll just conclude by saying you need to update this be a chart now and I would double it because it really works not just work it works well now it is an existing technology this is the main points sorry I should have put the slide but I made them right that's like I said now the C O 2 to Bethel is actually more economic than most people assume.

[00:48:15]
You can do it with this kind of stuff that you already learned in school you don't really need anything new. In the future. We just need to build bigger plants and secondly we need ideally we should learn to make the hydrogen a little bit more efficiently from renewable electricity.

[00:48:33]
That's it. Wall. So if you Google the company governor it's likely International when you see those a little national you balance I can actually go back to it. But so no I don't have such the answer off the top of my head. But you know as a as a person who lives so close to the real world.

[00:49:27]
It wouldn't even really matter let me give you another example we all drink. While bottles but you know the real hipsters will tell you should drink it from carrots because you know there's less leakage in and it's very inert that can is made from aluminum takes a tremendous amount of energy to get aluminum from the OR and it still is cheap enough to make be OK And so essentially if you believe this is a good thing the real question is just how much does it cost not how efficient Some things can actually be really inefficient and so my suspicion is a if I can give you a number of plans will do much better but I'm just saying I think that's not even the real thing to focus on of course it would be better if we could be as good as plants by I suspect we will never be plants maybe that's humbling but it's a beginning to build a plant that does the same thing maybe a lot less efficient and I think for the more sort of I think the more immediate question that I've been focusing on is just you know it can all mix.

[00:50:21]
But still a good question and I will think about it. This is the plot so you can we should be able to get the numbers from here because this is basically how to much if you just add up the energy this is the energy to make one pound of methanol and then you get just need to do a little math which is a good mass and energy balance of course exercise and you can find this diagram on the Internet government is like an international and then you can answer the question and then you can see plans a better.

[00:50:45]
That's my guess that. Yes of course of course. Absolutely so the economics I showed you today can be even better that's what Paul is saying correctly this is just because this is life and there is no chemical industry and there's no customer for this option so so it's kind of cool for me to say yeah this plant is really like this because I like to think it's possible to give people plant there is a little bit of the oxygen you're believing now was made in the factory you know it wasn't made by a plant in this is this is sort of what I thought the military magically say in the beginning this is new on earth we used to get all of our oxygen from plants and now we make a little bit in a chemical engineering factory but the it would be much better than this people would have done it if we can solve it and there are I'm sure many of you can think of all kinds of uses Yes.

[00:51:55]
So yes it's possible to combine that with me so because we're right now we're in Iceland and we don't even know we don't have methane but certainly if you're on a look and of course play this game you know. More laid out certainly if you are in a place where you have methane you can think of how you can do the 2 things together and beat the competition that would be great for the technology because it would expand yes but then surely.

[00:52:20]
Absolutely. Yeah that's a great question so that's the dream but you know it's hard to believe that it could be but you know we're aiming to get closer and closer because of course there's many other factors electricity prices just the cheap electricity becomes this becomes better and then there is of course a role for the government and subsidies and the like so I spatial years and years to think if there is a cost so that's the big thing of course is politically sense or if there's a cost to making ethanol in an expensive way the answer is almost certainly yes this can be cheaper but if this is there is no cause most people would sort of be OK here's the catch if you think of it most cheaper some of our cheap electricity in the U.S. right now is made from methane So if you can it's like that electricity and then you will you will see you have to lose because the electricity came from it.

[00:53:28]
So slowly but. That's the ultimate dream but I'm hesitant to say on the other hand if there's a price for the C O $2.00 then this will be cheaper because this is using C O 2 rather than emitting. It's. Going.