Carbon-11 radiopharmaceuticals are gaining an increasing importance in positron emission tomography due to their importance in diagnostic medicine. The most wide spread method of production of these radiopharmaceuticals is by methylation of an appropriate precursor with the highly reactive [11C]methyl iodide. Conventional synthesis of this intermediate involves liquid phase synthesis of [11C]methanol, which is the step that limits the specific activity of the final product. To avoid the loss of specific activity, a catalytic gas phase methanol synthesis process was evaluated. In this procedure, [11C]carbon monoxide would be reduced to [11C]methanol using a copper zinc oxide catalyst in the presence of hydrogen.In this study, a reactor to catalytically convert 50 ppm carbon monoxide to methanol was developed. A copper zinc oxide catalyst was prepared by a co-precipitation method. The catalyst was activated by reduction with hydrogen and passivated with oxygen prior to methanol synthesis. The effects of temperature, pressure and flowrate on the conversion of carbon monoxide to methanol were studied. The experimental results were used in conjunction with a commercially available process simulator to fit a kinetic model for methanol synthesis from carbon monoxide. This model was used to determine optimal operating conditions for this reactor and predicts a 60% conversion of [11C]carbon monoxide to [11C]methanol. These findings suggest that gas phase [11C]methanol synthesis is a viable alternative to the conventional liquid phase method, meriting further studies with carbon-11.