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Oct 3 17 tweets 6 min read Twitter logo Read on Twitter
All your carbon shall be methanol

Arguments for mopping up all carbon in wastes and residues into methanol; use it to supply sectors that can't be electrified

TL,DR: methanol is liquid; easier to transport/store than CH4/H2/CO2; costs scale down nicely to multi-MW size Image
We need carbonaceous fuels for big chunks of shipping, aviation and chemicals

Methanol can serve all of these

Flexible, distributed synthesis from wastes and residues (topped up with green H2, "bio-e-methanol")

=> minimise direct air capture, and transport of fiddly gases Image
None of these ideas are new; ideas of a methanol economy have been circulating since the 1980s (Asinger, Olah, etc.).

Novelty is to put them in updated net-zero context, remove daft bits like coal-to-methanol and methanol for land transport.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methanol_…
Image
ok, now for the basics

methanol, MeOH, CH3OH, is a liquid up to 65 C

liquid => store in tanks, transport by vehicle/pipeline

burns more cleanly than other fuels (no soot or SOx, low NOx)

synthesised from CO, CO2 and H2 (already at megaton scale in China)

don't drink it! Image
in cost-effective net-zero scenarios almost everything gets electrified

but some thorny sectors remain: dense fuels for long-distance shipping and aviation; feedstocks for chemicals

@Maersk sailed a container ship with green methanol, has ordered lots

maersk.com/news/articles/…
There are even funky concepts around to capture the CO2 on board the ship (using a reformer - the hydrogen goes to a fuel cell) and bring it back to land for synthesis

hymethship.com
Image
while most studies consider Fischer-Tropsch for kerosene, methanol is also in the running!

methanol-to-kerosene is around 90% efficient, but not yet commercial

going via methanol has big benefit that methanol synthesis can be run more flexibly than FT (big advantage with VRE!) Image
even if we reduce, reuse, recycle, we still need some primary production of plastics, paints, adhesives etc.

methanol can serve as a flexible basis for many of these (many already used in China)

obvs we still will also need ammonia for fertilisers, etc.

methanol use today: Image
Yes, the synthesis of methanol adds losses to chain of conversion, but you also save e.g. the compression losses of transporting and storing gases like hydrogen.

If carbon comes from sustainable biogenic sources, cost can be 70-90 EUR/MWh

doi.org/10.1016/j.rser…
Image
So what does methanol production look like?

Let's look first at the gasification route, suitable for solid wastes and residues.

Enerkem's plant in Canada uses non-recyclable and non-compostable waste, thus reducing landfill, to produce up to 38 million litres per year Image
In Denmark several projects are currently underway (BioReFuel and eSMR-MeOH) using biogas, adding electrolytic hydrogen to soak up the excess carbon, to produce e-biomethanol.

ieabioenergy.com/wp-content/upl…
Image
M2X Energy is building small modular reactors 😂 to convert fossil flare gas to methanol

Again note scaleability of methanol, and transportability - lack of easy transport of methane is why it's flared in 1st place

Methanol is the distributed solution!

m2x.energy
Image
The M2X energy synthesis units produce at a rate of around 1 MW - this would be bigger than most biogas facilities, at least in Germany, so either the substrate or the biogas itself would have to be pooled into each methanol synthesis facility.
Do CO2 demand and supply match?

In our EU model, there is ~400 MtCO2/a from wastes and residues (manure, MSW, straw, forestry residues, etc.).

Demand for aviation fuels is ~135 MtCO2/a, shipping ~150 MtCO2/a and chemicals ~80 MtCO2/a.

So enough in principle to avoid DAC.
Green H2 is still needed to mix with excess carbon in biomass, for ammonia and steel, but transport could be minimised.

Methanol could be used as a hydrogen carrier for e.g. backup power.

Or as a carbon carrier to get e.g. cement emissions from inland sites to coast for CCS.
To summarise:

Electrify everything*

*Use methanol for the rest**

**OK, also a bit of hydrogen for ammonia and steel

Happy to hear comments or thoughts!
PS For further reading I recommend the excellent report by @IRENA and @MethanolToday

irena.org/publications/2…

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More from @nworbmot

Jun 8
The US is not the EU 🇺🇸🚫🇪🇺

For green hydrogen, the US should consider stricter rules because:

- EU has other guardrails in place (ETS, RES targets)

- US needs to comply with EU rules if it wants to export there

- initial volumes in US could be v. high (3 $/kg...)

Thread! Image
The EU has loosened its rules for green hydrogen to require hourly matching only from 2030 (without grandfathering), and additionality by 2028

energy.ec.europa.eu/publications/d…
Loose rules inside the EU aren't necessarily a problem because we still have the ETS cap-and-trade system, as well as national renewable electricity targets like Germany's that include electrolysis demand.

These provide guardrails on the possible emissions consequences.
Read 11 tweets
Dec 20, 2022
Hourly or annual matching for green hydrogen?

Our new preprint shows: it depends.

Hourly matching has low system emissions impact across all scenarios.

Annual matching raises emissions if electrolysis is inflexible and the grid is not clean, otherwise it can lower emissions.
You can read more in our preprint (not yet peer-reviewed) here:

doi.org/10.5281/zenodo…

The modelling work was led by @lisazeyen_lz, with support from me and Iegor Riepin.

🧵 below
Why is this relevant? Because the final rules for what makes green hydrogen in the EU are being decided right now.

How do we match renewable electricity to electrolysis operation when electricity flows over the grid rather than thru a direct connection?

euractiv.com/section/energy…
Read 19 tweets
Oct 11, 2022
🚨 New 24/7 report for Europe! 🚨

Companies moving from *annual* to *hourly* clean power matching get:

- lower emissions for them *and* system

- reduced backup needs for system

- only small cost premium for 90-95% hourly matching

- stimulation of new tech for final 5-10%

🧵 Image
Today we published a report on the first results from an ongoing project between @TUBerlin and @Google:

doi.org/10.5281/zenodo…
Sign up for our webinar on the report in two weeks on 25th October at 2pm:

tu-berlin.zoom.us/webinar/regist…
Read 27 tweets
Mar 16, 2022
Nice paper shows that including decades of weather data reveals longer periods of wind and solar than typical years contain (dreaded D-word)

=> more long-term storage needed for VRE systems

Extreme events and inter-annual variability need to be considered!

few comments...
The study assumes Germany is isolated and considers electricity system only => caveats
- most hydrogen likely to be used for dense fuels / industry, so long-duration storage you get as "side-effect"
- benefits of electricity interconnection => less storage needed
- hydrogen does not need to be produced locally! could be imported as H2 or derived fuel

=> countries can trade globally to exploit best sites and mitigate local inter-annual variability
Read 7 tweets
Mar 15, 2022
- Renovating buildings to make them more efficient doesn't just reduce energy use

- It also reduces demand peaks in electrified system

- Critical for the kalte Dunkelflaute! (cold, electric heat, low wind, low sun)

- Strategies for heat demand in zero-CO2 Europe in a new paper
New(ish) paper from 2021 led by researcher @lisazeyen_lz

"Mitigating heat demand peaks in buildings in a highly renewable European energy system"

Open access in Energy:

doi.org/10.1016/j.ener…

Also on arXiv:

arxiv.org/abs/2012.01831
What's the problem?

You may know the "Dunkelflaute" - difficulty of supplying with wind and sun when both are low.

If we electrify building heating, we double-down on Dunkelflaute, because low wind and sun can coincide with cold periods with high heat pump use and low COP.
Read 14 tweets
Feb 23, 2022
Ever wanted to run an energy system model with your own assumptions?

We've made a simplified version of our 45-node European sector-coupled model available to run online.

It includes renewables, CCS, nuclear, power, hydrogen, biomass, industry, etc.

model.energy/scenarios/
You can ask it questions like:

i) At what cost does nuclear take over (around 3-4000 EUR/kW)

ii) What happens if we restrict power or hydrogen grid (costs go up!)

iii) What happens if we relax restriction on carbon sequestration from 200 MtCO2/a (costs go down!)
See scenarios others have run here:

model.energy/scenarios/resu…

Submit your own scenarios here (takes several minutes):

model.energy/scenarios/subm…
Read 7 tweets

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