Life Cycle Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Costs of Production of Diesel and Jet Fuel from Municipal Solid Waste

Abstract

This paper quantifies and compares the life cycle GHG emissions and costs of production of diesel and jet fuel derived from municipal solid waste (MSW) in the United States via three thermochemical conversion pathways: conventional gasification and Fischer− Tropsch (FT middle distillate, MD), plasma gasification and Fischer−Tropsch (Plasma FT MD), and conventional gasification, catalytic alcohol synthesis, and alcohol-to-jet upgrading (ATJ MD). We use expanded system boundaries to capture the change in existing MSW use and disposal, and account for parameter uncertainty with Monte Carlo simulations. We estimate median life cycle GHG emissions of 32.9, 62.3, and 52.7 gCO 2 e/MJ for FT, Plasma FT and ATJ MD fuels, respectively, compared to a baseline of 90 gCO 2 e/MJ for conventional MD fuels. Median minimum selling prices are estimated at 0.99, 1.78, and 1.20 $ per liter with the probability of achieving a positive net present value of fuel production at market prices of 14%, 0.1% and 7% for FT, Plasma FT and ATJ MD fuels, respectively. If the societal perspective rather than an investor's perspective is evaluated, then the probability of positive net present value of fuel production increases to 93%, 67%, and 92.5% for the FT, Plasma FT, and ATJ MD fuels, respectively.

Quantitative Policy Analysis for Sustainable Aviation Fuel Production Technologies

“…In the FT MSW pathway, the median MSP value is lower than previous findings in (Suresh et al, 2018) and Bann et al (2017), which estimated the MSP of MSW-derived FT fuels to be approximately 1.10 $/L. However, our findings agree with work by Niziolek et al, 2015 with a median MSP of approximately 0.60 $/L.…”

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.…”

Techno-economic assessment of jet fuel production using the Fischer-Tropsch process from steel mill gas

“…Both scenarios have significantly lower emissions intensity than conventional jet fuel (84-92 gCO 2 -eq./MJ (Budsberg et al, 2016;De Jong et al, 2017;Yoo et al, 2022). The normal scenario has similar emissions intensity to DSHC and E-FT processes, which have a reported average of 42 gCO 2 -eq./MJ and 54 gCO 2 -eq./MJ respectively, but range from 22-86 gCO 2 -eq./MJ (De Jong et al, 2017;Suresh et al, 2018). It has an emissions intensity within the found bounds of the other studied SAF production routes, except for FT-SPK and HTL, as shown in Figure 9.…”