scholarly journals Geographical Potential of Solar Thermochemical Jet Fuel Production

Energies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 802
Author(s):  
Christoph Falter ◽  
Niklas Scharfenberg ◽  
Antoine Habersetzer
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle ◽  
The United States ◽  
Jet Fuel ◽  
Production Costs ◽  
Solar Irradiation ◽  
Fuel Production ◽  
Capital Costs ◽  
Fuel Demand ◽  
Solar Thermochemical ◽  
Whole Life Cycle

The solar thermochemical fuel pathway offers the possibility to defossilize the transportation sector by producing renewable fuels that emit significantly less greenhouse gases than conventional fuels over the whole life cycle. Especially for the aviation sector, the availability of renewable liquid hydrocarbon fuels enables climate impact goals to be reached. In this paper, both the geographical potential and life-cycle fuel production costs are analyzed. The assessment of the geographical potential of solar thermochemical fuels excludes areas based on sustainability criteria such as competing land use, protected areas, slope, or shifting sands. On the remaining suitable areas, the production potential surpasses the current global jet fuel demand by a factor of more than fifty, enabling all but one country to cover its own demand. In many cases, a single country can even supply the world demand for jet fuel. A dedicated economic model expresses the life-cycle fuel production costs as a function of the location, taking into account local financial conditions by estimating the national costs of capital. It is found that the lowest production costs are to be expected in Israel, Chile, Spain, and the USA, through a combination of high solar irradiation and low-level capital costs. The thermochemical energy conversion efficiency also has a strong influence on the costs, scaling the size of the solar concentrator. Increasing the efficiency from 15% to 25%, the production costs are reduced by about 20%. In the baseline case, the global jet fuel demand could be covered at costs between 1.58 and 1.83 €/L with production locations in South America, the United States, and the Mediterranean region. The flat progression of the cost-supply curves indicates that production costs remain relatively constant even at very high production volumes.

scholarly journals Solar Thermochemical Hydrogen Production in the USA

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (14) ◽  
pp. 7804
Author(s):  
Christoph Falter ◽  
Andreas Sizmann
Keyword(s):  
Hydrogen Production ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
The United States ◽  
Solar Irradiation ◽  
Transport Sector ◽  
Fossil Energy ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Solar Thermochemical

Hydrogen produced from renewable energy has the potential to decarbonize parts of the transport sector and many other industries. For a sustainable replacement of fossil energy carriers, both the environmental and economic performance of its production are important. Here, the solar thermochemical hydrogen pathway is characterized with a techno-economic and life-cycle analysis. Assuming a further increase of conversion efficiency and a reduction of investment costs, it is found that hydrogen can be produced in the United States of America at costs of 2.1–3.2 EUR/kg (2.4–3.6 USD/kg) at specific greenhouse gas emissions of 1.4 kg CO2-eq/kg. A geographical potential analysis shows that a maximum of 8.4 × 1011 kg per year can be produced, which corresponds to about twelve times the current global and about 80 times the current US hydrogen production. The best locations are found in the Southwest of the US, which have a high solar irradiation and short distances to the sea, which is beneficial for access to desalinated water. Unlike for petrochemical products, the transport of hydrogen could potentially present an obstacle in terms of cost and emissions under unfavorable circumstances. Given a large-scale deployment, low-cost transport seems, however, feasible.

Deciphering the true life cycle environmental impacts and costs of the mega-scale shale gas-to-olefins projects in the United States

2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 820-840 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chang He ◽  
Fengqi You
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Life Cycle ◽  
Environmental Impacts ◽  
Shale Gas ◽  
The United States ◽  
Production Costs ◽  
Environmental Models ◽  
The U.S

Using detailed techno-economic-environmental models, we investigate the environmental impacts and production costs of the mega-scale shale gas-to-olefins projects in the U.S.

scholarly journals Life-cycle analysis of greenhouse gas emissions from renewable jet fuel production

2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sierk de Jong ◽  
Kay Antonissen ◽  
Ric Hoefnagels ◽  
Laura Lonza ◽  
Michael Wang ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle ◽  
Greenhouse Gas Emissions ◽  
Greenhouse Gas ◽  
Life Cycle Analysis ◽  
Jet Fuel ◽  
Fuel Production ◽  
Gas Emissions

scholarly journals Scenario-based Cost Analysis for Vegetable Grafting Nurseries of Different Technologies and Sizes

HortScience ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 49 (7) ◽  
pp. 917-930 ◽  
Author(s):  
Myles Lewis ◽  
Chieri Kubota ◽  
Russell Tronstad ◽  
Young-Jun Son
Keyword(s):  
Cost Analysis ◽  
Capital Investment ◽  
High Volume ◽  
The United States ◽  
Production Costs ◽  
Sensitivity Analyses ◽  
Capital Costs ◽  
High Volume Production ◽  
Volume Production ◽  
Low Volume

Grafting of fruiting vegetables is a relatively new advent in the United States with promise as a technology to improve both yields and the environment. However, investing in a commercial-sized grafting enterprise requires substantial capital investment and is a risky endeavor. A tool to help evaluate grafting costs for different production technologies and sizes of operation is a useful decision aid for individuals investing in new or modifying existing operations to produce grafted plants. Using a combination of engineering and financial equations, a scenario-based analysis was completed to obtain approximate capital and variable costs per plant for both new and existing production facilities. For exemplary purposes, four scenarios consisting of two different crops (tomato and watermelon) at two production sizes with different technology levels [low-volume manual grafting (one million plants per year) and high-volume fully automated grafting (100 million plants per year)] are presented to compare costs. For simplification purpose, consistent weekly production was assumed in the cost simulation. Total capital costs were $115,127 and $118,974 for low-volume production for grafted tomato and watermelon plants, respectively. They were $21.6 million and $16.7 million under high-volume production for tomato and watermelon, respectively. Among the four scenarios evaluated, variable costs per plant (costs of plants produced) were lowest for watermelons with high-volume production ($0.089 per plant), suggesting that production costs of grafted plants could decrease by scaling up production and introducing automation. Sensitivity analyses for high-volume production of tomato showed that the electricity rate, grafting clip price, and grafting robot speed were factors with the greatest influence on costs of plants. Scenario-based cost analysis was shown to be an effective tool for developing strategies to reduce the price of grafted plants.

Climate Impact and Economic Feasibility of Solar Thermochemical Jet Fuel Production

2015 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 470-477 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christoph Falter ◽  
Valentin Batteiger ◽  
Andreas Sizmann
Keyword(s):  
Climate Impact ◽  
Jet Fuel ◽  
Economic Feasibility ◽  
Fuel Production ◽  
Solar Thermochemical

Life Cycle Assessment of Potential Biojet Fuel Production in the United States

2011 ◽  
Vol 45 (21) ◽  
pp. 9133-9143 ◽  
Author(s):  
Datu B. Agusdinata ◽  
Fu Zhao ◽  
Klein Ileleji ◽  
Dan DeLaurentis
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Life Cycle Assessment ◽  
Life Cycle ◽  
The United States ◽  
Fuel Production

scholarly journals Evaluation of Techno-Economic Studies on the bioliq® Process for Synthetic Fuels Production from Biomass

Processes ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 684
Author(s):  
Nicolaus Dahmen ◽  
Jörg Sauer
Keyword(s):  
Economies Of Scale ◽  
Biomass Energy ◽  
Production Costs ◽  
Transport Cost ◽  
Fuel Production ◽  
Case Scenario ◽  
Worst Case ◽  
Capital Costs ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Economic Studies

Techno-economic studies by various research institutions on the costs for the production of biomass to liquid (BtL) fuels using the bioliq® process were analyzed and evaluated. The bioliq® process consists of decentralized pretreatment by fast pyrolysis plants for biomass energy densification, and of a central gasification and synthesis step for synthesis of gas and synthetic fuel production. For comparison, specific material and energy flows were worked out for both process steps, and conversion efficiencies were calculated for the conversion of straw to diesel fuel via the Fischer-Tropsch synthesis. A significant variation of the overall process efficiency in the range of 33–46% was mainly a result of the different assumptions made for electricity generation at the central location. After breaking down the individual cost items to either fixed or variable costs, it turned out that the largest cost items in the production of BtL fuels were attributable to feedstock and capital costs. Comparison of the specific investments showed that, in addition to economies of scale, other factors had a significant influence leading to values between 1000 and 5000 EUR/kW. This, particularly, included the origin of the equipment purchase costs and the factors applied to them. Fuel production costs were found to range between 0.8 and 2.6 EUR/L. Possible cost reduction by learning potential was investigated, leading to an improvement by a few percent of production costs. A sensitivity analysis of the individual cost items by up to 30%, for “investments” and “biomass and transport” cost increases, led to higher manufacturing costs of up to 17% in both cases. By harmonizing the depreciation period and the chosen interest rate, the production costs changed from -16% to +17%. Similarly, effects could be shown by adjusting the costs for maintenance and servicing, and the plant operation time. A superposition of these effects in a best-case scenario led to cost reductions of 21%. The most expensive variant in the opposing worst-case scenario raised costs by up to 27%. This uncertainty contributed already fifty percent to a preliminary cost estimate based on a conceptual design.

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