(376l) Social Justice and Societal Impact of Developing a Green Methanol Process in West Virginia

West Virginians bear much of the health risks caused by natural gas, mining, and chemical process industry in the Appalachian region. This mix of pollutants includes significant amounts of greenhouse gases. Toxic air pollutants cause cancer and other diseases, while ozone smog can cause a variety of health problems, such as asthma attacks and worsening the effects of bronchitis and emphysema. Approximately 46% of West Virginia’s population lives in disadvantaged tracts. In this talk, we will focus on the production of methanol and the social justice implications of developing a novel methanol process that significantly reduces the utilization of methane and the emission of greenhouse gases. The focus of the energy and environmental assessment will be in counties that have disadvantaged tracts in terms of air quality and climate change.

Methanol is a colorless, flammable liquid that is used as a solvent, fuel, and feedstock in the production of a wide variety of chemicals and materials. It has traditionally been produced from natural gas by first converting methane to syn gas and then converting syn gas to methanol. However, this is a very energy intensive process and produces a significant amount of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. In this research a novel conceptual design of an integrated process for producing green methanol is developed in the ASPENPlus simulation environment. This data is analyzed in terms of the carbon dioxide removed, energy utilized, and potential waste material generated and utilized in the Department of Energy’s Justice 40 assessment using the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) screening tool EJScreen. This tool is used to determine demographic socioeconomic and environmental information for specific areas that have a large concentration of chemical and power industry, which potentially generate the most amount of carbon dioxide. Environmental and demographic indicators are combined to determine EJ indexes. We utilize 12 environmental indicators and 7 socioeconomic indicators to generate 12 EJ indexes that are used for the preliminary energy and environmental justice assessment. The color-coded mapping and the standard report for each selected area are compared to the state, EPA region, and the nation in the assessment. We discuss how these results are disseminated in our undergraduate and graduate chemical engineering curriculum.

Acknowledgment

This study was supported by the United States Department of Energy