Economic competitiveness of co-gasification concepts covered in newly published article

The project Methanol production via black liquor gasification with expanded raw material base was finished earlier this year and a report was published. The overall project work has evaluated the prospects of producing biofuels via co-gasification of black liquor and different blend-in feedstocks (crude glycerol, fermentation residues, pyrolysis liquids) at different blend ratios. Now, the prepared scientific article, covering the techno-economic assessment made within the project, is accessible.

A conclusion from the article is that the co-gasification concepts showed economic competitiveness to other biofuel production routes. When compared with fossil fuels, the resulting crude methanol selling prices were above maritime gas oil prices. Nonetheless, for fossil derived methanol prices higher than 80 €/MWh, crude methanol from co-gasification could be an economically competitive option. Grade AA methanol could also compete with taxed gasoline. Crude glycerol turned out as the most attractive blend-in feedstock, from an economic perspective.

The article is published in Applied Energy and can be found online here.

The project has been carried out within the f3 and Swedish Energy Agency collaborative research program Renewable transportation fuels and systems.