Senior Design Expo 2019
The Senior Design Expo, held annually in May at Columbia University, is an opportunity for Columbia Engineering students to showcase what they have learned in their foundational math and science courses together with their engineering courses in innovative, creative, and purposeful designs and prototypes. Each year the Expo showcases more than 60 projects across all nine departments. Projects have included cutting-edge robotics, the New York City subway system, language technology, proposals for bridges to span the Hudson river, and much more.
The Senior Design Expo, held annually in May at Columbia University, is an opportunity for Columbia Engineering students to showcase what they have learned in their foundational math and science courses together with their engineering courses in innovative, creative, and purposeful designs and prototypes. Each year the Expo showcases more than 60 projects across all nine departments. Projects have included cutting-edge robotics, the New York City subway system, language technology, proposals for bridges to span the Hudson river, and much more.
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Natural Gas to Methanol Production Plant<br />
Daniela Marin & Shirley Xu<br />
Every day, about 200,000 tons of methanol are consumed. In 2015 the demand for methanol was<br />
75 million metric tons and this demand for methanol has since been increasing. Due to the<br />
increasing demand of methanol, there have been a growing number of methanol plants across the<br />
world. Currently there are over 90 methanol plants. This growing methanol industry has brought<br />
in $55 billion a year and created jobs for over 90,000 people around the world 1 . Methanol<br />
production in North America is expected to increase by 26% by 2020, making the competition<br />
between methanol producers higher. 2 Because of this demand for methanol, many ways of<br />
producing methanol have been studied. One method of producing methanol is to make it from<br />
syngas. Since the methanol synthesis reaction is highly exothermic, it is important to understand<br />
the reaction kinetics and maintain control of each subunit to mitigate the possibility of a runaway<br />
reaction. Our team is presenting a bid for the construction of a $1.26 billion additional component<br />
to an existing methanol plant. This design will produce 427,000 metric tons of methanol per year<br />
with a purity of 99.8% from 42.6 MMSCFD of natural gas. Of this natural gas, 26.4% will be used<br />
to produce 64.2 MW of net electricity. From sales of methanol and electricity, the plant gives an<br />
overall profit of $281 million per year. The plant has a 99.6% methanol yield. The total depreciable<br />
capital and the total capital investment cost are $1.098 billion and $1.26 billion respectively. The<br />
profitability analysis concluded that the return on investment (ROI) is 17.6%, the payback period<br />
(PBP) is 3.5 years, the net present value (NPV) of the investment is $497 million and the<br />
discounted cash flow rate of return (DCF RoR) was 21.9%.<br />
1<br />
The Methanol Industry, https://www.methanol.org/the-methanol-industry/<br />
2<br />
Morris, G. D. U.S. Methanol On The Comeback (2013). Retrieved December 10, 2018, from<br />
https://www.aogr.com/web-exclusives/exclusive-story/u.s.-methanol-on-the-comeback<br />
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