Sustainability assessment of catalyst design on CO2-derived fuel production

Abstract

Levelized carbon cost abatement (LCCA) and technology learning curves (TLC) are combined to assess the current technology gaps for expediting the deployment of CO₂-based renewable fuels. This study is conducted across three levels: Assessing the impact of the Fischer-Tropsch Synthesis (FTS) catalyst improvement on products, estimating the potential reduction in CO₂ emissions, and calculating the cost reduction per unit of avoided CO2 emissions. A novel hybrid approach combines bottom-up TEA and LCA tools to assess FTS catalysts, while top-down TLC methodology evaluates future projections of the CO₂ to jet fuel (CtJ) platform. The evaluation and comparison of the newly designed FTS catalyst (CYL) and a conventional catalyst (COC) on the CtJ platform are conducted within this scope. Replacing COC with CYL leads to an increase of >170 % in catalyst cost. However, despite the increase in catalyst cost, the overall fuel production of the CtJ platform is boosted by 16 %, and the energy efficiency is improved by +13 %. Consequently, the CYL catalyst enables the production of jet fuel and diesel at a lower cost (−15 % to −17 %) compared to COC from 2027 to 2050. Furthermore, for both cases' equal net CO₂ capture, CYL requires 15 % lower CO₂ capture and thus 41 % lower CO₂ emissions from the CtJ platform than COC. LCCA of CO₂-derived fuels is projected to be very close to the $170/tonne CO₂ carbon tax target in 2030. Thus, CO₂-derived jet fuels are expected to compete with fossil fuels in the Canadian market.