Abstract
This work assesses, technically, economically and environmentally, the production of a liquid electrofuel, with the potential to replace conventional petrol. A conceptual design of a Power-to-Liquids process, which considers wind electricity and captured CO2, was taken as a starting point for developing a process model in the commercial software Aspen Plus. The flowsheet includes water electrolysis, and the reverse water-gas shift (rWGS), Fischer-Tropsch (FT) and hydrocracking (HC) processes. The environmental impact assessment (EIA) of the process was conducted by means of the SimaPro 8 software, following a cradle-to-gate scope and the ReCiPe 2016 LCA damage model. The economic analysis was carried out in Aspen Process Economic Analyzer, after including the quoted costs for the electrolyser and reactors. We found that under current market conditions, the production cost of the electrofuel is higher than that of petrol in the UK for 2018 (10.03 USD/GGE and 1.71 USD/gal, respectively). However, the produced fuel shows better environmental performance than conventional gasoline in all three categories at the endpoint level (Human health, Ecosystems and Resources), which should become a major driver for its widespread adoption.
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