Techno-economic and environmental evaluation of producing chemicals and drop-in aviation biofuelsviaaqueous phase processing

Abstract

Novel aqueous-phase processing (APP) techniques can thermochemically convert cellulosic biomass into chemicals and liquid fuels. Here, we evaluate these technologies through process design and simulation, and from a techno-economic and environmental point of view. This is the first peer-reviewed study that conducts such an assessment taking into account different biomass pretreatment methods, process yields, product slates, and hydrogen sources, as well as the historical price variation of a number of core commodities involved in the production. This paper undertakes detailed process simulations for seven biorefinery models designed to convert red maple wood using a set of APP technologies into chemicals (e.g. furfural, hydroxymethylfurfural and gamma-valerolactone) and liquid fuels (e.g. naphtha, jet fuel and diesel). The simulation results are used to conduct a well-to-wake (WTW) lifecycle analysis for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and minimum selling price (MSP) calculations based on historical commodity price data from January 2010 to December 2015. An emphasis has been given towards aviation fuels throughout this work, and the results have been reported and discussed extensively for these fuels. It is found that the WTW GHG emissions and the MSP of jet fuel vary across the different refinery configurations from 31.6-104.5 gCO 2 e per MJ (64% lower and 19% higher, respectively, than a reported petroleum-derived fuel baseline) and $1.00-6.31 per gallon ($0.26-1.67 per liter, which is 61% lower and 146% higher, respectively, than the average conventional jet fuel price of the above time frame). It has been shown that the variation in the estimated emissions and fuel selling prices is primarily driven by the choice of hydrogen source and the relative production volumes of chemicals to fuels, respectively. The latter is a consequence of the fact that the APP chemicals considered here have a higher economic value than the liquid transportation fuels, and that their production is less carbon intensive compared to these fuels. However, the chemical market may get saturated if they are produced in large quantities, and increasing biofuel production over that of chemicals can help the biorefinery benefit under renewable fuel programs. Broader contextRenewable liquid fuels from biomass are a potential alternative to petroleum-derived fuels to address anthropogenic climate change. To date, renewable fuel production consists primarily of biodiesel and ethanol. Yet, the physical and chemical properties of these fuels are not compatible with a number of applications including aviation. Aviation needs drop-in biofuels that can seamlessly integrate with the existing infrastructure. The deployment of these fuels, however, has been impeded by high production costs driven primarily by high feedstock costs, low fuel yields and/or energy-intensive conversion processes. In our analysis, through detailed process design and simulation of biorefinery scenarios for a novel thermochemical conversion process, we find that the economic...

Furfural production in a biphasic system using a carbonaceous solid acid catalyst

“…A detailed estimation of fixed capital, total investment and further information can be found in Paper IV. In the techno-economic evaluation of producing chemicals and biofuels studied by Olcay et al, they included process simulations for seven biorefinery models designed to convert red maple wood into chemicals, among them FUR and HMF (Olcay et al 2018). A FUR minimum selling price of 1.53 € kg -1 , which is comparable to our findings, was reported.…”

Life cycle environmental analysis of ‘drop in’ alternative aviation fuels: a review

“…Out of the studies available, 15 (40%) contain some form of techno-economic assessment and interested readers can refer to these assessments here. 80,81,104,116,157,[160][161][162]169,170,178,[196][197][198] 17 (46% of the studies) consist of consequential LCA's. The LCA database soware or toolkit is also indicated (as described in Section 2.4) where the GREET database (14 studies or 37.83%) and SimaPro (13 studies or 35.13%) are the most popular LCA methods for assessing AAFs.…”

“…Capaz et al 182 Environmental Custom Disp., energy market None Ganguly et al 172 Attributional SimaPro 8 Mass Klein et al 204 Enviro/tech-eco. Market Olcay et al 161 Attrib/conseq. GREET/SimaPro Energy, market and mass Pierobon et al 205 Environmental…”

Low energy intensity production of fuel-grade bio-butanol enabled by membrane-based extraction

“…This is partly due to the challenging energy-intensive conversion processes that have low yields at every step (hydrolysis, fermentation, and recovery). 2,5 Nevertheless, bioethanol has been successfully commercialized for usage in transportation and power generation (581 TWh per year in 2018) supported by government policies such as the US Renewable Fuel Standard (RSF2) and EU Renewable Energy Directive (EU RED). 5,6 Both E10 and E85 fuels (10% and 85% by volume ratio ethanol respectively) can currently be found in gas stations globally.…”

“…6,9,10 Furthermore, the higher alcohols can be used in blends with petroleum products at a higher proportion than ethanol, or as pure fuels for road transportation and aviation. 5,11 In 2018, airlines worldwide committed to purchasing 6 billion litres of biodiesel for aviation, and the Scandinavian airline (SAS) aims to replace all jet fuels for domestic flights with biofuel by 2030. Furthermore, 13 airlines operating at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport in the United States have agreed to collaborate on a plan to utilise sustainable biofuels.…”