The methanol production cost in Marjan Petrochemical Plant has declined by about $625,000 per month by renovating the current burners of furnaces and installing new burners at the methanol production unit, a faculty member at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering of the University of Tehran said.
“The achievement is the result of the work of researchers of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering in modeling, optimizing and designing primary burners to provide the heat energy required for the endothermic reaction of methanol production from natural gas in the petrochemical industry,” Alireza Jalali was also reported as saying by the Oil Ministry’s news service.
“Considering the importance of exercising the accurate control of heat in different parts of reactors, burners are one of the main tools in advancing the goals of petrochemical units,” he added.
In the methanol petrochemical unit, the quality of natural gas conversion depends on temperature inside the chamber and its proper distribution throughout the furnace.
The redesign of burners calls for restructuring them in a way that the excess gas of the process, which normally enters the atmosphere as pollutants, are returned to the burner and used as fuel.
The use of burners has resulted in a reduction of 103 million cubic meters of gas consumption. By reducing polluting gases and flaring in the region, it will help prevent the annual release of 202,000 tons of carbon dioxide and further reduce the annual cost of production by over $7.5 million.
Methanol Production
Only a few countries previously had the knowhow of designing a burner for methanol production furnaces, including the US, China, Italy, Brazil, Denmark and Norway. Now, thanks to the efforts of domestic engineers, Iran can also design and manufacture this equipment.
Located in South Pars Petzone 2 in Asalouyeh Port on the Persian Gulf coastline, Marjan Petrochemical Plant is operating with an annual production capacity of 1.65 million tons of methanol in the southern Bushehr Province.
Methanol is one of the most widely used chemicals of high added value in the world. It is mainly used to produce formaldehyde (35.2%), MTPB (23.6%), acetic acid (8.6%), chloro-methane (4.2%), methyl amine (2.8%), fuel (2.7%) and solvents (2.3%).
Over the past few years, new applications, including the conversion of methanol to dimethyl ether (clean fuel), polypropylene and olefins, are expanding. The current growth rate of methanol use as fuel is three times higher than other methanol derivatives.
According to the latest reports, the annual global demand growth for methanol is expected to remain 1.3% per year.
