Aspen Plus Modeling of Green Methanol Synthesis from Biomass via a Molten Salt Process

Unofficial AI-generated summary based on the public title and abstract. Not an official translation.

🔬研究者:Provides a validated process model that can be used for techno-economic analysis and optimization of biomass-to-methanol pathways.

🏢実務担当者:Offers insights into energy and exergy efficiency that can guide pilot plant design and operation.

🏛政策担当者:Highlights the potential of low-temperature molten salt processes for biofuel production, relevant for renewable fuel mandates.

The integration of biomass-derived syngas with electrolytic green hydrogen for methanol synthesis is a promising decarbonization pathway, yet it is often hindered by the high energy penalty and tar formation associated with conventional high-temperature gasification. This study theoretically investigates a novel alternative: a low-temperature process operating at approximately 300 °C that uses molten salt as a dual-function medium for both thermochemical conversion of moso bamboo and thermal energy storage. A comprehensive Aspen Plus process model, encompassing biomass torrefaction, molten salt thermal treatment, gas purification, water electrolysis, and methanol synthesis, was developed and rigorously validated against prior experimental data, with all key deviations falling below ±5%. Systematic energy and exergy analyses were subsequently performed to quantify the overall process performance. Results show that the process achieves a high total energy efficiency of 68.27%, a value competitive with or exceeding that of many conventional gasification-based routes, highlighting the distinct low-energy consumption advantage of the molten salt approach. The corresponding total system exergy efficiency is 58.69%. Sensitivity analyses identified optimal operating conditions to maximize methanol production, including a stoichiometric number (S) of ≈2.8 and a synthesis temperature of 255 °C. Furthermore, the exergy analysis pinpointed the largest sources of thermodynamic inefficiency, which originate from the electrolysis module (22.28% of total loss) and the unrecovered chemical exergy of tar by-products (18.57%). This modeling study confirms that the molten salt-integrated pathway is a highly promising and energy-efficient alternative. The validated model provides a robust theoretical framework to guide future experimental optimization, techno-economic assessment, and industrial scale-up of this technology.

• semanticscholar https://doi.org/10.1088/1742-6596/3195/1/012016first seen 2026-05-15 20:21:09