Experimental and Simulation Studies of Methanol and DME Synthesis from CO2-rich Syngas on Cu/ZnO/ZrO2 Catalysts

Central elements for a climate-neutral energy system are processes that ensure the efficient
use of available raw material resources and enable the cross-sectoral application of
sustainable technologies. Here, an efficient CZZ methanol synthesis catalyst prepared using
a scalable coprecipitation method was used in combination with H-FER-20 as dehydration
catalyst to perform experimental kinetics studies and model-based optimization for the direct
synthesis of dimethyl ether (DME) in a wide range of variable process conditions. This, in order
to improve the DME productivity using various CO/CO2 gas feeds such as those that could be
used in Power-to-fuels technologies. Additionally, other dehydration catalysts (i.e. MFI zeolite
type) were investigated to study the catalytic performance during the direct DME synthesis
especially at CO2-enriched syngas feeds. In order to get knowledge of the catalyst stability,
long-term experiments were also performed until 250 h time on stream (TOS). Hereby, we
focus on the determination of product selectivity and catalysts productivity.