Major milestones reached in the first commercial CO₂ to Methanol plant

Carbon Recycling International (CRI) has delivered the complete process design package for the first-of-its-kind 110.000 ton per year CO₂-to-methanol plant, that recycles industrial waste gases.  Ground preparations and foundation work is already underway at the site of project partner Henan Shuncheng Group in Anyang, Henan province of China. The project is on schedule with commissioning and start of methanol production expected before the end of this year.

The plant in Anyang, which is financed and owned by the Shunli joint venture company, will recycle over 160,000 tons of CO₂ per year, equal to the emissions of nearly 60,000 cars or the amount emitted by 1.3 million airline passengers traveling between Beijing and Shanghai.

The completion of process design represents a major milestone for the project and in CRI’s continued development of its proprietary Emissions-to-Liquids (ETL) technology. CRI’s technical team has been hard at work completing the engineering on time, to a high standard of quality and process safety. The project was officially launched in March of 2020, during the early phase of the global pandemic, but the teams in Iceland and China have been able to avoid any delays in spite of social distancing measures and travel restrictions.

Detailed design and fabrication of process equipment has begun. CRI will be responsible for delivery of  key components for methanol synthesis as well as supporting the commissioning and start-up of the plant, which will include training the onsite staff of operators. Once the plant has been commissioned, plant operation will be handled by the owner, the Shunli joint venture company. The output, methanol with low-carbon intensity, will be sold to the growing local chemical and transport fuel market.

“This milestone could not have been achieved without the dedication and effort of our technical team and good collaboration with our project partners in China” said Ingolfur Gudmundsson, CRI’s Chief Executive Officer. ”We look forward to  seeing the plant built and becoming operational. This will be a major breakthrough for our efforts to bring technology to market that addresses the problem of carbon emissions both cost-effectively and at large scale.”

Excavation and foundation work ongoing at the Anyang site for the first commercial scale CO2 to Methanol plant based on CRI’s ETL technology.

Source: Carbon Recycling International, press release, 2021-02-09.