Hydrogen enhancement potential of synthetic biofuels manufacture in the European context: A techno-economic assessment

doi:10.1016/j.energy.2016.03.119

Energy

Volume 104, 1 June 2016, Pages 199-212

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.energy.2016.03.119 Get rights and content

Highlights

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Up to 2.6 or 3.1-fold increase in biofuel output attained via hydrogen enhancement.
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Enhanced processes economically attractive when cost of hydrogen below 2.2–2.8 €/kg.
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Hydrogen enhanced biofuels could displace 41–63% of the EU's road transport fuels in 2030.

Abstract

Potential to increase biofuels output from a gasification-based biorefinery using external hydrogen supply (enhancement) was investigated. Up to 2.6 or 3.1-fold increase in biofuel output could be attained for gasoline or methane production over reference plant configurations, respectively. Such enhanced process designs become economically attractive over non-enhanced designs when the average cost of low-carbon hydrogen falls below 2.2–2.8 €/kg, depending on the process configuration. If all sustainably available wastes and residues in the European Union (197 Mt/a) were collected and converted only to biofuels, using maximal hydrogen enhancement, the daily production would amount to 1.8–2.8 million oil equivalent barrels. This total supply of hydrogen enhanced biofuels could displace up to 41–63 per cent of the EU (European Union)'s road transport fuel demand in 2030, again depending on the choice of process design.

Section snippets

Background

The amount of atmospheric carbon is currently increasing at a rate of 4.3 $\pm$ 0.1 gigatonnes (C) per year, mainly as a result of human activity [1]. Multiple lines of scientific evidence show that this increasing amount of carbon in the atmosphere is warming the global climate system [2], [3], [4]. To limit warming under 2 °C, the European Council in 2011 reconfirmed the EU (European Union) objective of reducing GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions by 80–95% by 2050 compared to 1990. The European

Plant configurations

All plant configurations analysed in this work are based on a thermochemical conversion of biomass residues to synthesis gas via gasification, followed by subsequent catalytic conversion of synthesis gas to fuels. These base case process configurations are compared with enhanced process configurations where biomass-derived synthesis gas is supplemented with external hydrogen to maximise the conversion of synthesis gas carbon to fuel. The considered plant configurations illustrate two basic

Results

Mass and energy flows have been simulated for all examined plant configurations. All plants consume 100 MW (LHV) of wet (50 wt%) biomass residues, corresponding to 5.92 kg/s flow of dry biomass into the process. The results are summarised in Table B.9 and additionally visualised for the enhanced plant configurations in Fig. 6, Fig. 7. With non-enhanced plant configurations 51.8 MW of gasoline or 66.8 MW of methane can be produced via oxygen gasification. For steam gasification the gasoline

Discussion

A comprehensive analysis on the performance and costs of plants producing synthetic fuels from biomass residues or from biomass residues and electricity via water electrolysis has been presented. All the examined plant configurations are based on technologies that are either commercially available or at the very least successfully demonstrated at pre-commercial scale. When the production of synthetic biofuels is maximally enhanced by an external hydrogen source (used to hydrogenate also the

Acknowledgements

This work was carried out in the Carbon Capture and Storage Program (CCSP) research program coordinated by CLIC Innovation Oy with funding and support from Fortum Oyj, Neste Oyj, Gasum Oy, and the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation, Tekes.

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