Techno-economic assessment of an integrated biomass gasification, electrolysis, and syngas biomethanation process

Vakalis, Stergios; Patuzzi, Francesco; Baratieri, Marco

doi:10.1007/s13399-020-00654-9

Cited by 18 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 45 publications

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“…Biomethanation of syngas has also recently been demonstrated an effective syngas-to-methane technology on the lab scale and shows potential for scale-up [28]. In a previous techno-economic assessment on an integrated biomass gasification-electrolysis-biomethanation (IBGEB) process, we identified a bSNG minimum selling price of 2.68 €/Nm 3 and we indicated that key optimization opportunities rely on lower-pressure operation and better energy integration within the process [11]. As an important advantage over catalytic methanation, syngas biomethanation offers the possibility of low-pressure [22,23] or atmosphericpressure [28] operation, with the potential to generate energy savings.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 79%

“…The two processes require no direct thermal inputs other than biomass, while electrical consumption is largely dominated by electrolysis in both cases (90% in SAB and 91% in IBB), as a result of the absence of any WGS unit. The resulting specific energy input for bSNG is 7.65 kWh/ Nm 3 bSNG for SAB, compared to 2.3 kWh/Nm 3 bSNG for an IBGEB process with WGS [11]. This indicates that entirely avoiding catalytic WGS largely increases electrolytic hydrogen demand and consequently the specific energy demand of the renewable biomethane produced.…”

Section: Process Mass and Energy Balancementioning

confidence: 97%

“…It was previously demonstrated that biomass and surplus electricity cost have a strong impact on the MSP of bSNGproduced biomass-to-biomethane processes [10,11]. Consequently, these OPEX sources, as well as the selling price of biomethanol as a side product in IBB, are expected to show an important impact on bSNG price gap (Eq.…”

Section: Sensitivity Analysis On Major Direct Opex Assumptionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Biomass gasification can thus be integrated with methanation and water electrolysis in PtG systems, with the potential to address fuel-type diversification and storage needs. Integrated biomass gasification and catalytic methanation systems have been widely studied from a modeling and system performance point of view [9], while only few studies so far have addressed the performance of integrated biomass gasification-biomethanation systems [10][11][12].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Techno-economic modeling of an integrated biomethane-biomethanol production process via biomass gasification, electrolysis, biomethanation, and catalytic methanol synthesis

Patuzzi

Baratieri

2020

Biomass Conv. Bioref.

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Biological methanation (biomethanation) of syngas obtained from biomass gasification offers the opportunity to employ a low-pressure, low-temperature process to produce storable bio-derived substitute natural gas (bSNG), although its economic viability is limited by high energy and biomass costs. Research on syngas biomethanation techno-economic performance is limited and novel biomass-to-biomethane process configurations are required in order to assess opportunities for the enhancement of its efficiency and economic feasibility. In this study, we carried out the techno-economic modeling of two processes comprising integrated biomass gasification, electrolysis, and syngas biomethanation with combined heat and power recovery in order to assess and compare their fuel yields, energy efficiency, carbon efficiency, and bSNG minimum selling price (MSP). The first process operates standalone biomethanation (SAB) of syngas and can produce approximately 38,000 Nm3 of bSNG per day, with a total plant efficiency of 50.6%. The second process (integrated biomethane-biomethanol, IBB) exploits the unconverted carbon stream from the biomethanation process to recover energy and synthesize methanol via direct catalytic CO2 hydrogenation. In addition to the same bSNG output, the IBB process can produce 10 t/day of biomethanol, at a 99% purity. The IBB process shows little global energy efficiency gains in comparison with SAB (51.7%) due to the large increase in electrolytic hydrogen demand, but it shows a substantial improvement in biomass-to-fuel carbon efficiency (33 vs. 26%). The SAB and IBB processes generate a bSNG MSP of 2.38 €/Nm3 and 3.68 €/Nm3, respectively. Hydrogenation of unconverted carbon in biomass-to-biomethane processes comes with high additional capital and operating costs due to the large-scale electrolysis plants required. Consequently, in both processes, the market price gap of the bSNG produced is 0.13 €/kWhbSNG (SAB) and 0.25 €/kWhbSNG (IBB) even under the most optimistic cost scenarios considered, and it is primarily influenced by the cost of surplus electricity utilized in electrolysis, while the selling price of biomethanol exerts a very limited influence on process economics. Intensive subsidization would be required in order to sustain the decentralized production of bSNG through both processes. Despite their limited economic competitiveness, both processes have a size comparable with existing renewable gas production plants in terms of bSNG production capacity and the IBB process is of a size adequate for the supply of biomethanol to a decentralized biorenewable supply chain.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 79%

Section: Process Mass and Energy Balancementioning

confidence: 97%

Section: Sensitivity Analysis On Major Direct Opex Assumptionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Techno-economic modeling of an integrated biomethane-biomethanol production process via biomass gasification, electrolysis, biomethanation, and catalytic methanol synthesis

Patuzzi

Baratieri

2020

Biomass Conv. Bioref.

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“…The economic data used in the analysis are reported in Table 4 . A biomass supply chain cost equal to 40 €/t was considered from Menin et al (2020) [ 46 ] for a plant size equal to 147,000 t/y (18.6 t/h) of biomass fed to the gasifier, producing 861 kmol/h of syngas. Maintenance and labor costs were associated to the capital costs and estimated as 10% of the annual total capital costs.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Techno-Economic Assessment of Bio-Syngas Production for Methanol Synthesis: A Focus on the Water–Gas Shift and Carbon Capture Sections

2020

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The biomass-to-methanol process may play an important role in introducing renewables in the industry chain for chemical and fuel production. Gasification is a thermochemical process to produce syngas from biomass, but additional steps are requested to obtain a syngas composition suitable for methanol synthesis. The aim of this work is to perform a computer-aided process simulation to produce methanol starting from a syngas produced by oxygen–steam biomass gasification, whose details are reported in the literature. Syngas from biomass gasification was compressed to 80 bar, which may be considered an optimal pressure for methanol synthesis. The simulation was mainly focused on the water–gas shift/carbon capture sections requested to obtain a syngas with a (H2 – CO2)/(CO + CO2) molar ratio of about 2, which is optimal for methanol synthesis. Both capital and operating costs were calculated as a function of the CO conversion in the water–gas shift (WGS) step and CO2 absorption level in the carbon capture (CC) unit (by Selexol® process). The obtained results show the optimal CO conversion is 40% with CO2 capture from the syngas equal to 95%. The effect of the WGS conversion level on methanol production cost was also assessed. For the optimal case, a methanol production cost equal to 0.540 €/kg was calculated.

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CO_xFixation to Elementary Building Blocks: Anaerobic Syngas Fermentation vs. Chemical Catalysis

Perret

Campos

Delgado

et al. 2022

Chemie Ingenieur Technik

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Heterogeneous catalysis and anaerobic syngas fermentation represent two different approaches for the conversion of synthesis gas into chemicals and fuels. This review provides a unique comparison of different reaction paths for the fixation of CO 2 , CO and H 2 into elementary building blocks such as methanol, acetic acid and ethanol. Operating conditions, reactor engineering, influence of gas impurities, yields, conversion efficiencies as well as downstream product recovery are compared. It was found that mass-specific productivity ranges in the same order of magnitude for both technologies, while space-time yield of heterogeneous catalysis is up to three orders of magnitude higher.

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Techno-economic assessment of an integrated biomass gasification, electrolysis, and syngas biomethanation process

Cited by 18 publications

References 45 publications

Techno-economic modeling of an integrated biomethane-biomethanol production process via biomass gasification, electrolysis, biomethanation, and catalytic methanol synthesis

Techno-economic modeling of an integrated biomethane-biomethanol production process via biomass gasification, electrolysis, biomethanation, and catalytic methanol synthesis

Techno-Economic Assessment of Bio-Syngas Production for Methanol Synthesis: A Focus on the Water–Gas Shift and Carbon Capture Sections

CO_xFixation to Elementary Building Blocks: Anaerobic Syngas Fermentation vs. Chemical Catalysis

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Techno-economic assessment of an integrated biomass gasification, electrolysis, and syngas biomethanation process

Cited by 18 publications

References 45 publications

Techno-economic modeling of an integrated biomethane-biomethanol production process via biomass gasification, electrolysis, biomethanation, and catalytic methanol synthesis

Techno-economic modeling of an integrated biomethane-biomethanol production process via biomass gasification, electrolysis, biomethanation, and catalytic methanol synthesis

Techno-Economic Assessment of Bio-Syngas Production for Methanol Synthesis: A Focus on the Water–Gas Shift and Carbon Capture Sections

COxFixation to Elementary Building Blocks: Anaerobic Syngas Fermentation vs. Chemical Catalysis

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CO_xFixation to Elementary Building Blocks: Anaerobic Syngas Fermentation vs. Chemical Catalysis