| Summary: | Methanol is produced in large quantities in the Kingdom from Natural Gas since 1983, and yearly production rate exceeded two million tons in the year 1992. The paper explains the importance of this versatile simple alcohol as an important feedstock for valuable industrial chemicals. The paper also gives a comprehensive review of all the other applications of methanol in the field of fuels, solvents and as a precursor for several valuable, monomers.The objectives of the paper are as follows: (i) to review the modern achievements in the area of methanol processing through the description of the new chemical processes; (ii) to convey the awareness of the big gap between methanol marketing of the more valuable and less poisonous chemicals (e.g., vtn-ylacetate, cellulose acetate, polyacetals, MTBE, chloroform, and the methylamines); (iii) to explain the differences between the methanol fuel market and the profitable markets of methanol downstreams, and economical advantage for the Arab World and developing countries; and (iv) to discuss the coordiation of methanol processing projects in the Arab World and to give a view for the needed chemicals from the large methanol production, showing what are good products for the markets and what are the better downstreams.
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