Power-to-methanol: Techno-economic analysis of a regional, decentral case-study

This study investigates the decentral Power-to-Methanol economics for the situation in The Netherlands. Power-to-X processes are seen as a promising technology for balancing the energy market and enabling fossil-free pathways within the chemical industry. However, within literature there is a lot of variation in the levelized cost of methanol per production. The research presented in this paper consists of three steps, starting with an ASPEN Plus® simulation of different scenarios, followed by calculations of capital investment (CAPEX) and operational & maintenance costs (OPEX), finally resulting in the levelized cost of methanol. Results show that the operational cost greatly exceeds the capital costs, due to the high contributions of either H2 as raw material or sustainable electricity if H2 is produced on site. Levelized cost of sustainable methanol is calculated between 4,059 and 4,510 €/ton MeOH. This is twice as high compared to methanol generated with the same process using grey H2 (2,244 €/ton MeOH) and a factor 6 more expensive compared to bulk MeOH from fossil industry (700 €/ton MeOH). Future trends in costs show that for decentral production, grey and sustainable MeOH can have a similar order of magnitude by 2050.