New Catalysts and Reactors for the Synthesis or Conversion of Methanol

Dear Colleagues,

The scientific community widely considers global warming to be a major challenge to our society. The main cause of this critical issue is the increase of CO₂ concentration in the atmosphere due to the massive use of fossil fuels, which has only grown in recent years. Methanol is a versatile matter used both for industrial purposes and for various day-to-day life activities, and as it exhibits high effectiveness as an energy carrier, renewable methanol has been proposed by the Nobel Prize winner G. Olah as a way to close the CO₂ loop. Methanol can be environmentally synthesized from any feedstock, and its reforming reaction does not alter net CO₂ emission to atmosphere.

One of the ways to address this problem is to use CO₂ as a resource in the synthesis of valuable products, such as methanol, which can be obtained from CO₂ and hydrogen provided from renewable energy (solar or wind power). In industry, methanol synthesis using the catalyst CuO/ZnO/Al₂O₃ occurs at a high pressure (50 bar). This is of course very costly, and hence, one of the main aims of researchers is to find the right modifications to the traditional catalyst in order to make it work at a lower pressure while maintaining its high selectivity.

Methanol to hydrocarbon (MTH) is a promising process because it supplies a wide range of compounds as important intermediates in petrochemical synthesis, such as light olefins and high-quality gasoline. The conversion of methanol to hydrocarbons can be catalyzed by various catalysts (HZSM-5 for methanol to gasolines, SAPO-34 for methanol to olefines, etc.). The role of both catalyst and reactor in these reactions is very important, and the kinetic modeling of coke formation is necessary to reveal the effect of coke content on the product distribution of the reaction, and to optimize the design and operation of the reactor.

In this Special Issue entitled “New Catalysts and Reactors for the Synthesis or Conversion of Methanol”, we welcome all kinds of works in the form of original research papers or short reviews that reflect the state-of-the-art of the research area dealing with methanol applications, based on new catalysts or reactors.

Prof. Dr. Jaime Soler
Guest Editor

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