Biogas to Biomethanol Indonesia
Consumption on methanol is up to 1.1 million ton per year, in which most of it is imported. It costs up to 279 million USD, compared to its export value of 63 million USD. The only methanol producer in East Kalimantan has production cap of 660,000 ton per year. Natural gas supply in the last 10 years has decreased up to 10 % and gas price in Indonesia is now relatively higher than other countries.
So far, the utilization of biogas in Indonesia mainly focuses on electricity, co firing and bio-CNG . A large potential on biogas from agriculture industries can be converted to biomethanol and at the same time can reduce carbon emissions.
Biogas to biomethanol is a green option for Indonesia to start looking into this implementation, compared to grey methanol from coal. Methanol plants are usually designed to accommodate big capacities. However, with new developed technology from technology providers, there a biomethanol plant with the capacities of 25, 50, 75 T per day has been installed with the smallest one needing approximately 1750 nm3 of biogas.
In biogas generators from #pome, the 30 TFFB/h capacity can generate up to 500-600 nm3/h biogas. To get 1750 Nm/h, at least 90 TFFB/h plant can build one 25 TPD biomethanol plant. In addition, a bioenergy power plant must be added either from biomass or another POME source nearby.
A selling price for green methanol will be much different compared to fossil fuel methanol. For instance, using the price of 500-600 USD/ MT, an approximate revenue of 3,750,000 USD per year can be produced, coming from 25 TPD x 300 days/year x 500 USD.
Another indirect revenue can be taken from the International Sustainability and Carbon Certification (ISCC) certificate or carbon tax. The estimated return of interest (ROI) term will be around 3 – 4 years. There are about 850 palm oil mills and roughly less than 10% are already implementing methane capture and destruction from their pome lagoon. As a result, the Indonesian market is to cap 1.1 million MT per year. Take that number and subtract it with 660,000 MT per year, it results to 540,000 T per year and around 72 biomethanol plants need to be built. Another thing to be considered by large palm oil mill producers in Indonesia is that they are exporters of methanol for their downstream processes. Imagine what we could achieve in this through the collaborative efforts of stakeholders, including MEMR, ABgI, GIZ, GGGI and IDWA.
Author: Sakti Siregar, ABgI
