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Workshop / Seminar

CHE 598 Seminar: Strategic assessment of sustainable aviation fuel production technologies: Yield improvement and cost reduction opportunities

About the event

Presenter: Manuel Garcia-Perez, Professor and Chair, Biological Systems Engineering, Washington State University

The aviation industry has been studying strategies to produce sustainable aviation fuels (SAF) for over ten years. In this presentation we will share detailed techno-economic analyses (TEA) of six SAF production technologies and a simplified cost estimation method. Triglyceride based Hydroprocessed esters and fatty acids (HEFA) is compared against five lignocellulose-based technologies using standardized criteria: feedstock types, fuel capacity and financial assumptions/cost estimation. TEA was conducted to determine minimum fuel selling price (MFSP). The base case annual product capacity was fixed at 60 million liters of total fuel, for which SAF MFSPs ranged from 0.88 to 3.86 $/liter of fuel. Triglyceride-based HEFA had the best economic performance. Although triglycerides are more expensive than lignocellulose, HEFA is still a very competitive technology due to its high fuel yield (86-91% of feedstock). Lignocellulosic-based technologies have lower fuel yields (9-23% of feedstock) due to high oxygen content of initial feedstock, resulting in higher fuel cost per unit of fuel. In order to reach a market fuel price, SAF yields from lignocellulosic materials needs to achieve an estimated value of 61%. Such yields are only possible if carbon conversion efficiencies are close to 100%. Therefore, efforts are needed to avoid the removal of oxygen as CO2. Based on these considerations, a new scheme is proposed for SAF production that could result in yields much higher than those achieved by existing technologies at cost targets. The concept proposed integrates biomass/natural gas hybridized concepts to produce inexpensive SAFs.  More work is needed to confirm the technical and economic viability of the new concept proposed.

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