Palm Oil Biomass to Drop-In Fuels as Alternative to Traditional Jet Fuels: Large-Scale Process Modelling and Techno-Economic Assessment

Abstract

Palm oil-based biorefinery has the potential to generate renewable drop-in fuels based on a UAE-viable biomass resource. The objective of this work is to reduce the process scalability cost through implementing a "self-H2 supply-consumption" strategy. We have coupled the thermodynamic properties of effective BEA zeolite-based material evaluated using reactive molecular dynamics simulations to large- scale process modeling for producing drop-in fuels. Technoeconomic assessment (TEA) was implemented to quantify the process feasibility for commercialization. A sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) with a 76.75% wt. of undecene (C11H22) and a HHV of 44.96 MJ/kg was achieved. The deoxygenation reactor incurred the largest segment (76.1%) of the total capital investment marked as $6.71 million. Other equipment in line were the heating/cooling heat exchangers ($1.38 million, 15.6%), followed by the distillation column ($0.414 million, 4.7%). Exploring variations attributed to parameter sensitivity, the OPEX was found heavily reliant on the feedstock cost, which was optimized considering industrial symbiosis from a local palm oil production refinery. Compared to biomass-to-fuel processes in literature, this work reports a cost-competitive MFSP with a 3.38 $ L-1 for SAF production. Graphical Abstract