Techno-economic and environmental assessment of biomass-to-sustainable aviation fuel production via gasification coupled with a Fischer-Tropsch process

Abstract

Sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) is widely recognized as one of the most promising pathways for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from the aviation sector. This work presents an integrated modeling framework for SAF production from dual fluidized bed (DFB) biomass gasification and Fischer-Tropsch (FT) synthesis. By combining process simulation, energy analysis and techno-economic evaluation within a unified platform, the proposed framework enables a comprehensive assessment of technical, environmental and economic performance. At 100.0 kg/h biomass, 800 °C and S/B = 0.8, the process produces 15.0 kg/h SAF. The exported liquid-product energy ratio is 35.1%, while useful-energy utilization reaches 41.8% when internal gas recycling and DFB heat transfer are included. Within the defined foreground gate-to-gate boundary, the SAF-specific global warming potential (GWP) and acidification potential (AP) were 31.06 g CO2-eq/kg SAF and 2.64 × 10−3 g SO2-eq/kg SAF, respectively, after LHV-based energy allocation. The screening-level techno-economic assessment gives a total capital investment of approximately 4.8 × 106 USD and an SAF production cost of 6.7 USD/kg, indicating limited economic competitiveness under the present conceptual small-scale design basis. Overall, the work develops an integrated framework for biomass-to-SAF assessment, enabling systematic identification of thermodynamic, environmental and economic bottlenecks to support process optimization.