A model for assessing pathways to integrate intermittent renewable energy for e-methanol production

Renewable methanol has potential to be a key vector for attaining net zero emissions by providing a pathway to carbon neutrality for the value chains of carbon intensive industries with hard to abate emissions. To deliver an accurate assessment of feasibility, it is critical to understand the integrated operation and economies of the connected generation and conversion technologies that make up Power-to-Methanol (PtM) pathways. Given the highly variable nature of renewable energy (RE) and green hydrogen generation, it is also important to consider the need for feedstock and energy buffers to achieve reliable operation. Herein, we developed a globally applicable open-source cost framework consisting of a farm-to-gate model of Power-to-Methanol (PtM) populated with performance and cost functions from process simulation, recent literature, and industry consultation. This open-source tool was developed to evaluate PtM projects at various scales and locations, utilizing different recycled carbon feedstock sources, with a range of renewable power generation and electrolyser configurations, as well as balancing technologies including intermediate feedstock and power storage options. A key feature of the tool is the ability to analyse and optimize the incorporation of these balancing technologies. By using present cost estimates and defining design constraints to maintain operational viability, we apply this framework to map out the economies of PtM for potentially suitable Australian and international locations as case studies. The study estimates indicative levelized cost of methanol (LCMeOH) of 1360 A$/tMeOH and 1710 A$/tMeOH corresponding to PtM including CO2 sourced from industrial flue gas (IFG) and direct air capture (DAC) respectively. While the case studies analysed in this work consist mainly of Australian locations, the open-source tool is applicable for other global locations as demonstrated by the cases evaluated for PtM in Chile and Germany. The tool presented here aims to serve as a customisable framework to support the assessment, optimization, and deployment of commercial scale e-methanol projects.