Techno-economic assessment of bio-oil aqueous phase-to-liquids via Fischer-Tropsch synthesis and based on supercritical water reforming

High energy demand along with large capital costs have been the main drawbacks of Fischer-Tropsch plants, which may call into question the economic viability of the Fischer-Tropsch process. The second issue is the focus of this paper, which presents a techno-economic assessment of biofuels productio...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Campanario Canales, Francisco Javier, Gutiérrez Ortiz, Francisco Javier
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión aceptada para publicación
Fecha de publicación:2017
País:España
Institución:Universidad de Sevilla (US)
Repositorio:idUS. Depósito de Investigación de la Universidad de Sevilla
OAI Identifier:oai:idus.us.es:11441/172628
Acceso en línea:https://hdl.handle.net/11441/172628
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enconman.2017.10.096
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Fischer-Tropsch
Supercritical water
Techno-economic
Bio-oil
Aqueous-phase
Biofuel
Descripción
Sumario:High energy demand along with large capital costs have been the main drawbacks of Fischer-Tropsch plants, which may call into question the economic viability of the Fischer-Tropsch process. The second issue is the focus of this paper, which presents a techno-economic assessment of biofuels production by a low-temperature Fischer-Tropsch synthesis with electricity as a co-product from supercritical water reforming of the bio-oil aqueous phase. A plant size of 60 t/h was considered and a heat-integrated process was designed to be energy self-sufficient, which includes syngas production and upgrading, as well as liquid fuels production by Fischer-Tropsch synthesis and refining. The simulation and optimization was performed with the aid of Aspen Plus, and some case-studies were performed. Using a feeding concentration of 25 wt%, 2.74 t/h biofuels and 5.72 MWe were obtained. In this case, by performing a discounted cash flow analysis, with 10% rate of return and 100% equity financing, the minimum selling prices for the refined FT-gasoline, FT-diesel and FT-jet fuel were 1.20, 0.93 and 0.26 €/kg (0.84, 0.75 and 0.20 €/L), respectively, which are competitive prices with respect to the market values of the equivalent fossil fuels. Likewise, the decrease in the selling prices as the plant capacity increases was also analyzed.