New catalysts development and process variable study have been carried out to seek the possibility of developing methyl formate intermediate methanol synthesis process into commercial scale. Cu/MgO was prepared in an effort to replace the copper chromite catalyst. Cu/MgO was inferior to copper chromite in terms of the weight-based activity and the stability. An attempt to substitute the homogeneous(methanol-soluble) KOCH3 catalyst with an anion-exchanged polyaniline resin was partially successful since anion-exchanged resin showed some activity but it seems to dissolve in the methanol solvent. The best combination of the catalysts is Ba-promoted copper chromite with KOCH3 . The optimum reaction condition is at 180, 61 atm with syngas flowing at 1,000 L/kg·hr to the reaction mixture of 40 g of copper chromite and 5 g of KOCH3 dispersed in 250 cc of methanol. At this condition, the problem of severe deactivation of the catalytic system by a few ppm of CO2 has been overcome and the system was stable up to 1% of CO2 in the feed gas. The catalytic system was stable when feed gas was syngas generated from coal gasification (H2 /CO=1) with 70% of H2 conversion at the rate of 6 gmole/kg·hr. When triglyme was used as a solvent instead of methanol, slight reduction in the rate of reaction was observed. However, the use of triglyme can make the recovery of the product methanol much easier than the methanol solvent system.