Michael Vischmidt, Dmitry Ponomarenko, Alexander Nikulin, PhD. ARBOK Strategic Research Institute. Preprint, October 2026. License: CC BY 4.0.
Abstract
Methane is the most abundant fuel gas, yet it is moved either through pipelines or as liquefied gas at minus 162 °C. Both routes are expensive, and a large share of associated, mine and landfill methane is never moved at all: it is flared or vented. Methanol is a liquid that ordinary tankers and tanks handle at room temperature, but the classic route from methane to methanol needs two plants, steam reforming and synthesis over a copper catalyst at 50–100 atmospheres. The direct route, methane and a mild oxidant to methanol in one step, fails on selectivity: the site that breaks the C–H bond of methane burns methanol on to formaldehyde and carbon dioxide. We describe ARBOK-MEOX, a direct-oxidation concept that combines single iron atoms held on a graphite support (TEGA) with a titanium-based photocatalyst under light. We review the published evidence for each part, compare the economics with classic liquefaction at the level of a plant, a field, the United States and the world, and give a ceiling for the methanol that flared gas could yield: about 220 mln t and about $77 bln per year in 2025. The method of building the iron site into the support is proprietary and is not disclosed.
Keywords: methane, methanol, direct oxidation, single-atom catalyst, thermally expanded graphite, titanium dioxide, flared gas, liquefied natural gas
1. Introduction
Natural gas is about 90% methane. It lies in gas fields, coal seams and under the seabed, and it is also produced by organic decay in landfills and released from coal mines. Humanity has used it as a fuel for a long time. The difficulty is not in finding it but in moving it. Pipelines thousands of kilometers long and fleets of LNG carriers are the two accepted answers, and both are capital-heavy. A third outcome is common where neither is available: the gas is burned in a flare or released into the atmosphere.
Flaring is large. In 2025, 167 bln m³ of gas were flared worldwide [1]. Methane that is released unburned is a strong greenhouse gas: about 30 times carbon dioxide over 100 years and more than 80 times over 20 years [2]. Moving this gas as a liquid would put it to use, but liquefaction at minus 162 °C does not pay for small and remote sources.
Methanol is a different kind of liquid. It is not chilled methane but a different substance, liquid at ordinary conditions. It travels in ordinary tankers and is stored in ordinary tanks. The question is how to make it from methane in one step.
2. The classic routes
2.1 Liquefaction. Methane becomes liquid only at minus 162 °C, and the cold has to be held from the plant to the port. A large liquefaction line costs $600–1,400 per tonne of annual capacity [3]; for a typical line of 4–5 mln t per year this is $2.4–7 bln, before carriers and receiving terminals. A large line charges about $130–145 per tonne of LNG, which is about $90–100 per 1,000 m³ of gas, or $0.09–0.10 per 1 m³. The figure per cubic meter looks small because a cubic meter is small: for 1 bln m³ per year it is about $95 mln. A small unit costs about $0.25 per 1 m³, capital plus operation. After liquefaction the gas is still gas, at minus 162 °C.
2.2 Through synthesis gas. Methane is first combined with steam to make synthesis gas. Synthesis gas is then converted to methanol over a copper, zinc and aluminum catalyst at 50–100 atmospheres and 250–280 °C. These are two plants where one step would do.
3. Why direct oxidation is hard: selectivity
The direct reaction, methane and oxygen to methanol, is attractive: no reforming and no tens of atmospheres. It is rarely achieved because of selectivity.
A catalyst is a substance on whose surface a reaction takes place and which is not consumed. The place on the surface where a molecule reacts is an active site. The C–H bond in methane holds at about 440 kJ/mol, so the active site must be aggressive. Only such a site can remove the first hydrogen atom, which is the first step of oxidation.
In methanol the same bond is weaker, because an oxygen atom of the hydroxyl group sits next to the carbon and makes hydrogen removal easier. The aggressive site that has just split methane therefore attacks methanol with the same ease and burns it on to formaldehyde and carbon dioxide. The product burns faster than it accumulates. What is needed is a selective catalyst: strong enough to take methane, weak enough to leave methanol. This is a narrow corridor.
4. Iron: particles against single atoms
Thermally expanded graphite looks like a convenient support: its carbon sheets are spread apart and the surface area is large. Iron could be placed between the layers. In practice iron oxide does not lie flat between sheets; it gathers into particles. A particle is a large aggressive site that does not stop at methanol and oxidizes it further, to formaldehyde and carbon dioxide. Particles of iron oxide also speed up the burning of the carbon itself in oxygen, so the sheet begins to burn out before the reaction reaches its regime. The layered structure holds a powder but does not hold a single atom.
The conclusion is that the iron must sit one atom at a time, each atom on its own without neighbors. Then it is a small selective site rather than a particle in which sites stick together.
5. The biological and laboratory models
Bacteria that feed on methane carry the enzyme methane monooxygenase. It converts methane to methanol at room temperature and without clumps of oxide: at the heart of the soluble enzyme is iron in a nest of nitrogen and oxygen donors held by a protein [4]. A single-iron analog has been reproduced in the laboratory: iron phthalocyanine, a molecule in which an Fe atom already sits in a nitrogen ring, fixed on a graphene sheet, keeps its FeN₄ site intact. With hydrogen peroxide at room temperature this site gives one-carbon oxygen products, methanol, methyl hydroperoxide and then formic acid. Of the 3d metals screened in the same test (Mn, Fe, Co, Ni, Cu), only iron worked [5].
6. The titanium partner
A second published line of work places iron species on titanium dioxide. FeOOH and Fe₂O₃ on TiO₂, under light of about 1 solar constant, oxidize methane at room conditions. The reported result is about 15% conversion in 3 hours, with over 97% of the product alcohols and over 90% methanol itself [6]. Titanium does not replace iron. It carries charge apart, lowers the overpotential of the reduction reaction and keeps the reaction from falling into carbon dioxide. Iron breaks the bond; titanium makes sure the methanol does not burn.
7. The ARBOK-MEOX concept
ARBOK-MEOX puts both pieces into one scheme. Iron is built into TEGA, the ARBOK graphite support, as single atoms. Next to it works a titanium-based catalyst under light. Methane and a mild oxidant are fed to this pair. The graphite holds the single iron atom and conducts the electron; titanium keeps methanol from complete combustion. The first liquid product is methanol; methyl hydroperoxide and formic acid are common next to it on the iron site, as they were on graphene.
How the iron site is built into the support is part of the ARBOK technology. It has been developed and verified by the institute and is not described here. The scheme is presented as a concept assembled from published evidence and ARBOK results, not as a measured plant.
8. Economics
The assessment is made from the point of view of the operator: what the operator sells and what the operator would otherwise spend. Methanol is valued at $350 per tonne, and one tonne of methane gives at most two tonnes of methanol. The cost of the ARBOK-MEOX unit itself is not included in the figures below. ARBOK-MEOX is expected to cost significantly less than liquefaction and to pay back in 5–7 years.
Plant. 100 mln m³ of gas flared per year: about 130 thousand t of methanol, about $45 mln of sales; liquefaction of the same gas would cost about $25 mln.
Field. 1 bln m³ per year: about 1.3 mln t of methanol, about $450 mln of sales; liquefaction about $250 mln.
United States. About 6 bln m³ per year: about 8 mln t of methanol, about $2.8 bln of sales; liquefaction $0.6–1.5 bln.
World (2025). 167 bln m³: about 220 mln t of methanol, about $77 bln of sales; liquefaction $17–42 bln.
Liquefaction is a cost and leaves the gas as gas, to be kept cold and shipped. ARBOK-MEOX turns the same gas into a liquid that can be transported at ordinary temperature. Instead of an expense, income. The figures are a ceiling set by chemistry; the share achieved depends on the conversion per pass and the recycling of unreacted methane.
9. Conclusion
Methane burned in a flare is a lost liquid. The obstacle to making it is not activity but selectivity, and the published evidence points to one answer: iron held one atom at a time, supported on a conducting graphite sheet and paired with a titanium photocatalyst. ARBOK-MEOX applies this to the gas that is flared, vented from mines and released from landfills today. Worldwide, that gas would give about 220 mln t of methanol and about $77 bln per year, where liquefaction would only spend $17–42 bln and leave the gas as gas.
References
[1] World Bank, Global Flaring and Methane Reduction Partnership. Global Gas Flaring Tracker Report, 2026.
[2] Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis. Working Group I contribution, Chapter 7. Cambridge University Press, 2021.
[3] Songhurst, B. LNG Plant Cost Reduction 2014–18. Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, paper NG 137, October 2018.
[4] Tinberg, C. E.; Lippard, S. J. Dioxygen activation in soluble methane monooxygenase. Acc. Chem. Res. 44, 280–288 (2011).
[5] Cui, X. et al. Room-temperature methane conversion by graphene-confined single iron atoms. Chem 4, 1902–1910 (2018). doi:10.1016/j.chempr.2018.05.006
[6] Xie, J. et al. Highly selective oxidation of methane to methanol at ambient conditions by titanium dioxide-supported iron species. Nature Catalysis 1, 889–896 (2018). doi:10.1038/s41929-018-0170-x