IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/energy/v337y2025ics0360544225042215.html

Design optimization of a renewable methanol production system with multiple types of energy storage devices

Author

Listed:
  • Jiang, Yinghua
  • Huang, Yiwei
  • Huang, Liangde
  • Tong, Zhangfa

Abstract

This study presents a promising approach to synthesize high value-added products from carbon dioxide by the chemical reaction with renewable electrolyzing hydrogen. However, there is a significant contradiction between the methanol production process that requires stable operation and the renewable generation process that is naturally intermittent and fluctuating. To address this issue, a novel renewable methanol production system, considering the flexible operation characteristics and multiple types of energy storage devices, including battery, hydrogen and methanol tanks, is constructed in this work. And then the corresponding mathematical optimization model with the target for the lowest total annual cost (TAC) is established. A case study of a photovoltaic-wind-energy storage devices-methanol production system is adopted to elaborate the effectiveness of the proposed method. By addressing the mathematical model, the optimal capacity configuration scheme and operation strategy of the renewable methanol production system with the minimum TAC can be determined in this work. The adoption of hybrid energy storage systems that combine material and energy forms is conducive to reducing system costs and increasing the penetration rate of renewable energy. The methanol production system driven by the renewable energy prefers hydrogen energy storage. Furthermore, the economic performance and configuration characteristics of the renewable methanol production system are comprehensively analyzed and discussed in the perspectives of system composition, renewable energy penetration rate, renewable electricity curtailment rate and region.

Suggested Citation

  • Jiang, Yinghua & Huang, Yiwei & Huang, Liangde & Tong, Zhangfa, 2025. "Design optimization of a renewable methanol production system with multiple types of energy storage devices," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 337(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:energy:v:337:y:2025:i:c:s0360544225042215
    DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2025.138579
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544225042215
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.energy.2025.138579?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Huang, Renxing & Kang, Lixia & Liu, Yongzhong, 2022. "Renewable synthetic methanol system design based on modular production lines," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 161(C).
    2. Lewandowska-Bernat, Anna & Desideri, Umberto, 2018. "Opportunities of power-to-gas technology in different energy systems architectures," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 228(C), pages 57-67.
    3. Li, Jinhang & Chen, Heng & Li, Jingjia & Zhang, Yixi & Pan, Peiyuan & Bian, Jiayu & Yu, Zhiyong, 2025. "Bi-level optimization model of hydrogen-blended gas units and multi-type energy storage system considering low-carbon operation," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 314(C).
    4. Chen, Chao & Lu, Yangsiyu & Banares-Alcantara, Rene, 2019. "Direct and indirect electrification of chemical industry using methanol production as a case study," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 243(C), pages 71-90.
    5. Bai, Mingqi & Liu, Shuqi & Qi, Meng & Kim, Minseong & Liu, Shangzhi & Moon, Il & Feng, Wei & Liu, Yi, 2025. "A novel multi-period proactive flexible load management strategy for low-cost off-grid green methanol production," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 320(C).
    6. Taslimi, Melika & Khosravi, Ali, 2025. "Flexibility and profitability in power-to-methanol plants: Integrating storage solutions and reserve market participation," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 327(C).
    7. Qiu, Fei & Sun, Zhen & Li, Huiping & Qian, Qian, 2023. "Process simulation and multi-aspect analysis of methanol production through blast furnace gas and landfill gas," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 285(C).
    8. Wang, Jing & Kang, Lixia & Liu, Yongzhong, 2022. "A multi-objective approach to determine time series aggregation strategies for optimal design of multi-energy systems," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 258(C).
    9. Nguyen, Nhut Tien & Matsuhashi, Ryuji & Vo, Tran Thi Bich Chau, 2021. "A design on sustainable hybrid energy systems by multi-objective optimization for aquaculture industry," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 163(C), pages 1878-1894.
    10. Ali, Khozema Ahmed & Abdullah, Ahmad Zuhairi & Mohamed, Abdul Rahman, 2015. "Recent development in catalytic technologies for methanol synthesis from renewable sources: A critical review," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 508-518.
    11. Gabrielli, Paolo & Gazzani, Matteo & Martelli, Emanuele & Mazzotti, Marco, 2018. "Optimal design of multi-energy systems with seasonal storage," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 219(C), pages 408-424.
    12. Svitnič, Tibor & Sundmacher, Kai, 2022. "Renewable methanol production: Optimization-based design, scheduling and waste-heat utilization with the FluxMax approach," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 326(C).
    13. Kotowicz, Janusz & Węcel, Daniel & Brzęczek, Mateusz, 2021. "Analysis of the work of a “renewable” methanol production installation based ON H2 from electrolysis and CO2 from power plants," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 221(C).
    14. Huang, Yue & Zhu, Lin & He, Yangdong & Wang, Yuan & Hao, Qiang & Zhu, Yifei, 2023. "Carbon dioxide utilization based on exergoenvironmental sustainability assessment: A case study of CO2 hydrogenation to methanol," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 273(C).
    15. Wang, Jing & Kang, Lixia & Huang, Xiankun & Liu, Yongzhong, 2021. "An analysis framework for quantitative evaluation of parametric uncertainty in a cooperated energy storage system with multiple energy carriers," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 226(C).
    16. Staffell, Iain & Pfenninger, Stefan, 2016. "Using bias-corrected reanalysis to simulate current and future wind power output," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 1224-1239.
    17. Mariaud, Arthur & Acha, Salvador & Ekins-Daukes, Ned & Shah, Nilay & Markides, Christos N., 2017. "Integrated optimisation of photovoltaic and battery storage systems for UK commercial buildings," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 199(C), pages 466-478.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Wang, Jing & Kang, Lixia & Huang, Xiankun & Liu, Yongzhong, 2021. "An analysis framework for quantitative evaluation of parametric uncertainty in a cooperated energy storage system with multiple energy carriers," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 226(C).
    2. Wang, Jing & Kang, Lixia & Liu, Yongzhong, 2022. "A multi-objective approach to determine time series aggregation strategies for optimal design of multi-energy systems," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 258(C).
    3. Wang, Jing & Ye, Kai & Kang, Lixia & Liu, Yongzhong, 2024. "Flexible design of renewable hydrogen production systems through identifying bottlenecks under uncertainty," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 311(C).
    4. Wang, Jing & Kang, Lixia & Liu, Yongzhong, 2024. "Optimal design of a renewable hydrogen production system by coordinating multiple PV arrays and multiple electrolyzers," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 225(C).
    5. Petkov, Ivalin & Gabrielli, Paolo, 2020. "Power-to-hydrogen as seasonal energy storage: an uncertainty analysis for optimal design of low-carbon multi-energy systems," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 274(C).
    6. Østergaard, P.A. & Lund, H. & Thellufsen, J.Z. & Sorknæs, P. & Mathiesen, B.V., 2022. "Review and validation of EnergyPLAN," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 168(C).
    7. Oliver Gregor Gorbach & Noha Saad Hussein & Jessica Thomsen, 2021. "Impact of Internal Carbon Prices on the Energy System of an Organisation’s Facilities in Germany, Japan and the United Kingdom Compared to Potential External Carbon Prices," Energies, MDPI, vol. 14(14), pages 1-41, July.
    8. Svitnič, Tibor & Sundmacher, Kai, 2022. "Renewable methanol production: Optimization-based design, scheduling and waste-heat utilization with the FluxMax approach," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 326(C).
    9. Kim, Jeongdong & Qi, Meng & Park, Jinwoo & Moon, Il, 2023. "Revealing the impact of renewable uncertainty on grid-assisted power-to-X: A data-driven reliability-based design optimization approach," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 339(C).
    10. Fonder, Michaël & Counotte, Pierre & Dachet, Victor & de Séjournet, Jehan & Ernst, Damien, 2024. "Synthetic methane for closing the carbon loop: Comparative study of three carbon sources for remote carbon-neutral fuel synthetization," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 358(C).
    11. Walden, Jasper V.M. & Bähr, Martin & Glade, Anselm & Gollasch, Jens & Tran, A. Phong & Lorenz, Tom, 2023. "Nonlinear operational optimization of an industrial power-to-heat system with a high temperature heat pump, a thermal energy storage and wind energy," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 344(C).
    12. Cui, Chengtian & Qi, Meng & Zhang, Xiaodong & Sun, Jinsheng & Li, Qing & Kiss, Anton A. & Wong, David Shan-Hill & Masuku, Cornelius M. & Lee, Moonyong, 2024. "Electrification of distillation for decarbonization: An overview and perspective," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 199(C).
    13. Lei, Zijian & Yu, Hao & Li, Peng & Ji, Haoran & Yan, Jinyue & Song, Guanyu & Wang, Chengshan, 2024. "A compact time horizon compression method for planning community integrated energy systems with long-term energy storage," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 361(C).
    14. Tang, Zongyue & Zhang, Leiyu & Wang, Lei & Gao, Ruxing & Jun, Ki-Won & Kim, Seok Ki & Zhang, Chundong & Yang, Yingju & Wan, Hui & Guan, Guofeng, 2024. "Carbon negative methanol production for CO2 utilization: Process design and 4E analysis," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 313(C).
    15. Xin-Cheng Meng & Yeon-Ho Seong & Min-Kyu Lee, 2021. "Research Characteristics and Development Trend of Global Low-Carbon Power—Based on Bibliometric Analysis of 1983–2021," Energies, MDPI, vol. 14(16), pages 1-20, August.
    16. Campion, Nicolas & Montanari, Giulia & Guzzini, Alessandro & Visser, Lennard & Alcayde, Alfredo, 2025. "Green hydrogen techno-economic assessments from simulated and measured solar photovoltaic power profiles," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 209(C).
    17. Jiang, Yinghua & Kang, Lixia & Liu, Yongzhong, 2020. "Optimal configuration of battery energy storage system with multiple types of batteries based on supply-demand characteristics," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 206(C).
    18. Saad, Dimitri M. & Sodwatana, Mo & Sherwin, Evan D. & Brandt, Adam R., 2025. "Energy storage in combined gas-electric energy transitions models: The case of California," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 385(C).
    19. Vo, Dat-Nguyen & Zhang, Xuewen & Yin, Xunyuan, 2025. "Forecasting and surrogate models-based MINLP for long-term integrated design and planning of power-to-methanol," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 397(C).
    20. Leoncini, Gabriele & Rousset, François & Bertin, Benjamin & Mettali, Hamza & Bideaux, Eric & Clausse, Marc, 2025. "Using extreme value theory to take better account of peak demand when generating typical periods by clustering for district heating networks design optimisation," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 316(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:energy:v:337:y:2025:i:c:s0360544225042215. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/energy .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.