Abstract In economy nowadays, methanol is already a key compound widely employed as building block for producing intermediates or synthetic hydrocarbons, solvent, energy storage medium, and fuel. This status is expected to last in the near future or even improve to the point of making this compound a central participant in the worldwide economic landscape. For these reasons, every improvement to its production process, in terms of energy savings, optimization, etc., has potential to promote relevant economic benefits. Methanol production comprises three main steps: preparation of syngas, methanol synthesis and downstream separation. This paper aims at reviewing technologies and procedures for modeling and optimizing the second aforementioned phase: the synthesis reactor. Specifically, we focus on packed-bed units, which represent the most widespread technology. In the manuscript, we are going to describe and compare both steady-state and dynamic reactor models as well as analyze typical assumptions and implementation schemes. The kinetics of methanol synthesis is also reported in detail due to a long debate, present in the literature, concerning the real carbon source for methanol, the nature of the active sites and the effect of their morphology and oxidation state.

中文翻译：

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高效甲醇合成：前景、技术和优化策略

摘要 在当今经济中，甲醇已成为广泛用作生产中间体或合成烃、溶剂、储能介质和燃料的基础化合物。预计这种地位将在不久的将来持续下去，甚至提高到使该化合物成为全球经济格局的核心参与者的程度。由于这些原因，其生产过程的每一次改进，在节能、优化等方面，都有可能促进相关的经济效益。甲醇生产包括三个主要步骤：合成气制备、甲醇合成和下游分离。本文旨在回顾对上述第二阶段进行建模和优化的技术和程序：合成反应器。具体来说，我们专注于填充床单元，代表了最广泛的技术。在手稿中，我们将描述和比较稳态和动态反应器模型，并分析典型的假设和实施方案。由于文献中存在的关于甲醇的真正碳源、活性位点的性质及其形态和氧化态的影响的长期争论，甲醇合成的动力学也被详细报道。