Low Temperature Methanol Synthesis in Slurry Phase With a Hybrid Copper-Formate System

A novel catalyst system composed of sodium formate and copper magnesium catalyst was developed to synthesize methanol from syngas (CO/H2 = 1/2) in ethanol solvent at 5.0 MPa and 160 °C. The pH value was found to exert an important effect on the reaction activity of the co-precipitated Cu/MgO–Na catalyst; the reaction performance of the catalyst system was also sensitively dependent on the reaction temperature in the range of 150–180 °C. The successive experiment results indicated that the combination of formate species and copper catalyst should be the active site. In addition, the carbonylation step was the limiting-rate step, which was restrained by the equilibrium.