Carbon Dioxide, Carbon Monoxide & Methanol

Production of hydrogen and synthesis gas chemicals preceded the invention of the steam reformer in the 1920's by over 30 years.  Headwaters extensive experience in reforming and processing synthesis gas from a broad range of sources has given us broad exposure and experience in syngas chemical production and purification.  

Extracting carbon dioxide from syngas, whether using amine solutions, physical solvents or a licensed hot potassium carbonate solution approach is the most straightforward co-product from syngas streams.  The choice of the optimal separation technology depends on the syngas composition as well as the conditions at the project site.  Headwaters can design and build the carbon dioxide separation system using either open-art or proprietary solvent systems.   The resulting carbon dioxide must be dehydrated and purified, which we do using technology from our partnership with BASF.  

Carbon monoxide production is much less widely practiced, and requires more specialized solvent technology than carbon dioxide.  The design and fabrication of the needed equipment very closely follows that for carbon dioxide production, and also leverages our BASF partnership for gas dehydration.  

Both carbon oxide production processes require recompression of the purified product for subsequent use.  Headwaters expertise in process compressor packaging allows us to optimize the compressor  configuration, whether the goal is onsite use at moderate pressures or export or injection at high pressure.

Unlike carbon oxide production, methanol synthesis generally does not require syngas purification, only compression of raw syngas and recycle of unreacted syngas to the methanol synthesis pressure, which is generally 40-50 atmospheres with modern copper catalysts.   Headwaters has our own in-house, multi-stage adiabatic synthesis process for methanol production up to 250 tpd.  Our process has many advantages for small-scale methanol production:

• One train of compression equipment, minimizing cost and complexity

• One firetube boiler to remove all synthesis reaction waste heat while generating process steam

• Uses process steam to drive the single compressor train, reducing operating cost compared to electric drive

• Small and simple reactor vessels with a minimum of internals for low cost and ease of catalyst maintenance

Of course, staged adiabatic methanol synthesis isn't new, and our process owes much to historical processes from Girdler, amongst others.  We uniquely benefit for many thousands of hours of catalyst aging data in the pilot plant environment at the optimal reaction conditions for our process.  We also have the advantage of specializing in the design and fabrication of reactors, boilers and process vessels, allowing us to  optimize the design of the process to deliver inherently low cost.