Green Methanol: An alternative to a carbon pipeline

Roughly 80 people crowded into a room at the Waverly Area Veterans Post Dec. 5 to hear about an alternate use of ethanol plants’ CO2 emissions that would not require use of a pipeline.

The CEO of CapCO2 Solutions, Jeff Bonar, led the 1½-hour informational session, explaining how carbon dioxide that results from ethanol production can be combined with hydrogen to produce methanol, which has many commercial uses, including as a fuel.

The methanol production can take place right at an ethanol plant with the proper technology, which Bonar would like to supply through his company.

Electricity is needed to produce the hydrogen and combine it with the CO2. When that electricity is produced in renewable ways, such as from wind farms or solar panels, then the resulting methanol is considered to be “green” and commands a higher price than methanol produced using fossil fuels, according to Bonar.

Green methanol production can also reduce the carbon intensity scores of ethanol plants by up to 25 points, he indicated.

“Green methanol is a great next step for the ethanol industry,” Bonar said. “Lots of people want to buy green methanol. Green methanol is a different product [for the ethanol plants].”

Products that use methanol include insulation, roofing, rigid plastics, fake leather, tires, fertilizer, cosmetics and disposable diapers, he said.

“Methanol is a building block for many, many products,” he said, noting that the preponderance of methanol that is now available is produced using fossil fuels.

Green methanol is an emerging market with a product that companies are willing to pay a lot for, more than twice as much as for methanol produced with fossil fuels, according to examples Bonar gave.

“You put that together—the big market for green methanol, the ability to make green methanol straightforwardly at an ethanol plant, and the ethanol becomes low-carbon—this is the perfect mix,” he said. “No pipeline needed.”

Instead, methanol can be transported in train cars, the same way ethanol is. Should any methanol be spilled, it dissipates immediately, he said.

“It’s a big, big win-win business proposition,” he said, “as well as being something that a lot of people want.”

The large amount of electricity needed to produce the methanol would be handled by storing CO2 and then processing it during off-peak hours, when there is less demand for electricity, Bonar said.

Audience concerns about the amount of water needed for the methanol production—25% more than an existing ethanol plant requires, Bonar said—prompted him to clarify that CapCO2 would avoid such situations.

“We’re not interested in doing it in a place that’s fighting with the local people over water,” he said. “It’s got to be a place that has enough water.”

Iowa, in general, is rich with possibility for producing methanol, green or otherwise.

“Iowa’s the mother lode of ethanol CO2,” he said, which was why he was talking with Iowans, but he added that the company’s first site may well be in another state.

Bonar and audience members referred throughout the meeting to the pipeline proposed by Summit Carbon Solutions, which would run through Iowa and would likely require the use of eminent domain to complete.

“I don’t know that Summit’s going to be successful,” Bonar said. “Certainly the turnout at this event indicates to me that they’ve got some significant real problems besides the business problems and the environmental problems and the eminent domain problems. They’ve got problems.”

An audience member expressed concern that Summit already has agreements with some Iowa ethanol plants to pipe their CO2 out of state.

Bonar replied, “If you can’t get the pipeline approved, those agreements with the ethanol plants go away, and the ethanol plants now have a problem. Frankly, I’m not that worried about that.”

Once CapCO2 has a pilot methanol production site up and running, “I think the ethanol plants are going to be chasing us,” he said, “because it’s such a clean, nice solution.”

Bonar, who lives in New York City, has a Ph.D. in computer science and used to work for IBM overseeing large teams of programmers. When he left that work, he said, his adult children encouraged him to do something about the climate.

“‘Your generation screwed it up, now you should fix it,’” he quoted them as saying. “That was pretty straight talking. So I took them seriously.”

That motivated Bonar to start “putting the pieces together” to promote green methanol, he said.

The end of Bonar’s presentation included a pitch for investors to support CapCO2 Solutions, specifically so they could fund a pilot site and prove the advantages of the technology.

“We get one up and running,” he said, “[and] I think that it totally changes the landscape. Because, why would you do a pipeline? Why would you throw this thing [CO2] away when you can get good money out of it? Why would you pay Summit to take it away when you could make money using it?”