low volume if a gas or liquid is utilized the carbon dioxide is scrubbed out using whatever method is most economical as with the cleaning of gases in the primary step gases from the cleaning process 12 are merged with the primary gases emerging from the gas cleaning sequence 4 the merged gas stream is sent to the methanol reactor 13 which is supplied with catalyst 14 the catalyst is nickel and copper generally in the proportions of 93 7 and are known to those skilled in the art the product methanol and any other hydrocarbons formed in the reactor 13 are sent to the ethanol reaction process 15 the catalyst 16 is used to convert the methanol to ethanol and is generally a nickel copper catalyst in the proportions of 75 25 also known to those skilled in the art the process may be reactive distillation in which the methanol is converted to methyl acetate then split into ethanol and methanol in this case the methanol is continuously recycled through to be reprocessed this catalytic sequence from synthesis gas to ethanol utilizes known catalysts and techniques however catalysts are always under development we found that the described sequence is the most efficient to date with high catalyst selectivity and conversion in the future other catalysts may be developed to go directly from synthesis gas to ethanol in one step in which case that would be the method of choice in the process of the present.