Webinar: Flexible operation of power-to-X plants producing green fuels – The case of plastic waste-to-methanol (PWtM)

The PWtM-Flex project focuses on SemperCycles plastic waste-to-methanol (PWtM) plant that uses oxygen and hydrogen from an electrolysis unit to produce synthetic gas (syngas) by gasifying the plastic waste. This syngas is used to produce methanol. In the project, we have developed a mathematical model of both the gasification process and the profit from operating the entire plant, including the electrolyzer. Based on this model, we use optimization tools to determine how the plant should be operated for a given sequence of renewable energy production and methanol prices. The optimization tools produce, e.g., hourly schedules that indicate how much plastic waste should be processed and how much oxygen and hydrogen is needed from the electrolysis unit.

The learnings from this project are equally relevant to other types of PtX plants, where it is also necessary to account for many types of revenue streams, varying prices, and process-specific operational constraints. Furthermore, the developed models and optimization tools can also be modified to represent other types of PtX processes and help them make their operation profitable.

Organizers: Technical University of Denmark, Department of Applied Mathematics and Computer Science (compute.dtu.dk), SemperCycle ApS (sempercycle.com), Nordic Hydrogen (nordichydrogen.dk), Energy Cluster Denmark (energycluster.dk)

The event is supported by Ministry of Higher Education and Science.