Production of Valuable Methanol from Hazardous Methane: Advances in the Catalysis

Abstract

Being a greenhouse gas, methane is a threat to biodiversity. Hence, the utilization of methane by converting it into a valuable chemical like methanol is one of the most promising re-actions. To solve that problem, a large number of studies have been performed on methane-to-methanol conversion (MTM process). Still, to date, the production of methanol from methane on an industry scale is a crucial challenge. After a thorough study, in this review article, only those reported methods, which produce a satisfactory yield of methanol using a large variety of cata-lysts like natural, heterogeneous, non-thermal plasma, nanoparticles fixed in solid bed, etc., have been briefly discussed. To investigate minutely, the reason behind the inefficiency of each type of catalyst in producing methanol on a large scale has been analyzed, and a comparison among the activities of different catalysts has been made. Herein, catalysts with comparatively better ef-ficiency under ambient temperature and pressure have also been highlighted. With the hope of producing methanol on a large scale, some basic concepts of future planning strategies for de-signing more suitable reaction systems are also proposed in this study