Methanol's Place in the Race to Cleaner Bunker Fuels

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Written by Paul Wiseman for Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--The recent backup of tanker and cargo ships off the California coast has brought renewed focus on pollutants and greenhouse gases emitted by the fuel used by approximately 85% of those vessels. Because those ships must keep their engines running even when parked offshore, to keep electricity and other systems operating, thousands of barrels of heavy fuel oil (HFO) are burned, creating pollution, with little benefit to the economy.

HFO is basically the leftovers after refiners have produced gasoline, diesel and other lighter fuels. HFO is energy dense, but it also is high in sulfur. As a result, the shipping industry is estimated to account for approximately 13% of all sulfur dioxide emissions worldwide.

While the International Maritime Organization (IMO) 2020 ruling requires ships to use lower sulfur fuel or use onboard equipment to filter out sulfur dioxide, there is a growing movement to find alternative fuels that are inherently less polluting.

While no clear winner has yet emerged from among the top contenders, liquefied natural gas (LNG), liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), ammonia, hydrogen and methanol are being widely researched.

The Push for Methanol
Methanol is a simple alcohol, CH3OH, used for hundreds of products including plastics, paints and more. It also is used as fuel for transportation and cooking. Its main advantage is that, like HFO, it is liquid at ambient temperature and pressure, so it can be stored similarly with minor modifications.

In August 2021, for example, Danish shipping giant Maersk (Copenhagen) announced a partnership that expects to produce green, carbon-neutral methanol (e-methanol) starting in 2023. A company statement says the partnership, with REintegrate, a subsidiary of the Danish renewable energy company European Energy (Copenhagen), will use renewable energy and biogenic CO2 to produce approximately 10,000 metric tons of e-methanol. This will power Maersk's first e-methanol-equipped ship. Subscribers to Industrial Info's Global Market Intelligence (GMI) Chemical Processing Project Database can click here for a list of detailed project reports.

"The Reintegrate project is one of nearly than 500 Power-to-X projects we are seeing popping up all over the world," said Trey Hamblet, VP Research Chemical Processing for Industrial Info. Power-to-X is an emerging growth trend in which green commodities, including hydrogen produced via electrolysis, are turned into green methanol or other chemicals.

Subscribers can click here for a list of related Power-to-X project reports from Industrial Info.

In December 2021, the shipper announced the purchase of eight e-methanol-capable box ships from Hyundai Heavy Industries (Ulsan, South Korea), placed in August. Delivery is expected in 2024. The statement says the ships will be 20% more energy-efficient than standard ships and can make a round-trip between Asia and Europe without refilling. The ships' dual fuel engines will allow them to also use traditional very low-sulfur fuel oil (VLSFO) or methanol made from natural gas or residual industry gases, which is more readily available.

What About Energy Density?
Since methanol's energy density is less than half that of about 15 megajoules per liter (MJ/L), as compared to 35 MJ/L, it will require more onboard storage space to reach the same distances as HFO.

What About Supply?
With the new ships designed to carry enough fuel for a world-spanning trip, the supply issue will be mitigated as long as the facility in Denmark can produce enough fuel to load all six of the ships currently on order. The tradeoff will be in the aforementioned requirement for larger tanks just to get the same reach as HFO, resulting reduced cargo capacity per cubic foot of ship space.

There is already a growing move toward some type of methanol as an alternative in most ports. Says the International Council on Clean Transportation: "Eighty-eight out of the top 100 international ports already have the bunkering infrastructure in place to support methanol fuel."

What About Cost?
HFO has been a shipping mainstay for more than a century because of its low cost and high energy density. But recently the fuel's prices have risen due to a combination of factors, not the least of which is the increasing price of crude oil. During the pandemic, many refineries reduced HFO capacity. That, combined with a large increase in use in fourth-quarter 2021 due to economies returning to normal, has created supply-demand issues that have pushed HFO prices to two-year highs.

So while there are no hard figures on the cost of e-methanol, as it varies from plant to plant, it is likely to be significantly higher than any cost for HFO.

What About Environmental Impact?
For any fuel, the carbon footprint is gauged by how much is used in the entire production process. This is known as well-to-wake, or WTWA. There are four kinds of methanol: brown, made from coal, which does not significantly reduce the carbon footprint; gray, made from natural gas, and also does little for the carbon footprint; blue, made from blue methanol and carbon-capture technology, which does reduce the carbon footprint, and green, which may be bio-methanol produced from biomass or e-methanol produced from green hydrogen, captured CO2 and renewable electricity. Both greatly reduce the carbon footprint.

The WTWA impact is key, but availability, energy density, storage and other factors all must be weighed in the decision-making process.

Industrial Info Resources (IIR), with global headquarters in Sugar Land, Texas, six offices in North America and 12 international offices, is the leading provider of global market intelligence specializing in the industrial process, heavy manufacturing and energy markets. Industrial Info's quality-assurance philosophy, the Living Forward Reporting Principle, provides up-to-the-minute intelligence on what's happening now, while constantly keeping track of future opportunities. Follow IIR on: Facebook - Twitter - LinkedIn.