Biogas: a Possible New Pathway to Methanol?

Biogas is one of the energy sources that are gaining more and more importance in Europe and, in particular, in Italy and Germany. Nowadays, it is used for the combined production of heat and power. Here we propose to use all of its major components (CO2 and CH4) to produce methanol. A feasibility study of this process is reported, where we optimize the interactions between reforming and methanol synthesis, depending also on the variations in biogas composition due to the nature of the raw material, i.e. biomass. Finally, we identify the optimal region in which syngas composition should be included.