Practical Assessment for At-Scale Electrochemical Conversion of Methane to Methanol

Electrochemical methane-to-methanol technologies are regarded as one of the most attractive options to improve greenhouse gas emissions while providing a pathway to produce one of the most important bulk industrial chemicals. In recent years, several reports demonstrated individual cells producing methanol and other C-1 products while proclaiming that these cells will inevitably lead to industrial adoption at small sites with flared, stranded natural gas. However, the practical realization of these systems relies on finding operating regimes that can lead to profitability, which has not been well studied in the literature to date. Here we provide detailed calculations of process profitability over 4000 cases for electrochemical methane-to-methanol processes while considering two different overall reactions, multiple production scales, a wide range of operating conditions (voltage, current density), and various electrical costs. Finally, the analysis shows that the technology requires substantial improvement before expecting profit, and targets are determined for future performance, providing direction for R&D in this potentially transformational area.