Size Does Matter: Technoeconomic Analysis of Methane Electro-Oxidation

There is growing focus on electrochemical oxidation of methane due to greater availability of renewable electricity and the desire to move to cleaner production of methane-based bulk chemicals. We analyze the economic feasibility of electrochemical production of methanol, formaldehyde, formic acid, ethanol, acetic acid, acetaldehyde, and propanol at different scales (1, 10, 100, and 1000 tonnes/day) to determine key performance metrics (electricity price, current density, selectivity, conversion, and stack cost) that enable economic production. The results show that electricity price and stack cost are the most important economic indicators, suggesting that the critical deployment hurdles that need to be addressed are the stack efficiency and cost. With current grid electricity emission factors, all processes are competitive compared to current thermal–catalytic processes.