Different alternative carbon sources like CO₂, biomass and plastic waste, can be used to replace fossil carbon as feedstock in the production of methanol. Based on current literature, the plastic-based methanol route is the most competitive one among the three based on price indicator, but there is still a lack of comprehensive understanding of the techno-economic differences between alternative feedstock technologies. In this study, three technologies from each alternative feedstock were assessed to evaluate the techno-economic trade-offs between them. The research shows that even though currently the plastic-based route is comparatively cost competitive with the conventional route of producing methanol, the CO₂-based methanol route can also be competitive with green hydrogen prices in the range of 1400-1100 EUR/t. While the biomass-based route showed superior energy performance compared to the other two.

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Due to the heavy dependence on fossil-fuels as raw materials, the defossilization of feedstocks in the petrochemical industry represents a challenge. A large number of possible process routes that use alternative carbon sources (ACS) like CO2, biomass, and waste are being developed for the feedstock replacement. For instance, to produce ethylene, more than 40 ACS process routes were identified. These multiple options make the selection of the promising process route a complex task. By replacing feedstocks, a process can change significantly and the impacts related to these changes in a highly interconnected industrial cluster can create cascading effects due to system interdependencies. This work aims to understand the cascading impacts in carbon flows and prices of implementing an ACS production process in an ethylene cluster. The results show that PVC will be the highest impacted and defossilizing one value-chain can have cascading effect on other value-chains as observed for PET.@en