Sustainable DMC production from CO2 and renewable ammonia and methanol

Abstract

[EN]One of the main goals of the green chemistry is to develop sustainable and less hazardous chemical processes and products. Dimethyl carbonate (DMC) is attracting attention due to the wide variety of applications and the possibility of producing it from carbon dioxide. In this work, the DMC production process via urea has been optimized. Two main sections can be distinguished: the synthesis of urea and the production of DMC. An equation based approach is used to model the system. The DMC production from renewable ammonia/methanol/CO2 presents a promising production cost, around 520 €/t. The production of urea alone has also been evaluated in this work. A sensitivity analysis is carried out showing the influence of the methanol price in the DMC cost and the ammonia price in the urea cost. A simplified sustainability index is used to evaluate the environmental performance of urea/DMC production.