Process analysis and comparative assessment of advanced thermochemical pathways for e-kerosene production

Climate change and energy supply are major driving forces for the promotion of sustainable fuels production. In the aviation sector, due to inherent difficulties to adopt electrification methods for long distance flights, the successful implementation of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) is crucial for the achievement of greenhouse gas emissions mitigation strategies. This study presents four different pathways for the valorization of captured CO2 into synthetic kerosene using renewable hydrogen and demonstrates the comparative assessment in terms of various technical and aspects such as hydrogen consumption, thermal energetic efficiency and produced e-kerosene quality. Two are based on the production of Low Temperature Fischer-Tropsch synthesis based on CO (LTFT) or CO2 conversion to fuels, while the other two are based on the valorization and upgrading of light alcohols (methanol and ethanol) derived from CO2 hydrogenation. The process models were developed in Aspen Plus. Simulation results revealed that the LTFT pathway is the most efficient pathway to maximize the jet fuel yield with the lower energy and exergy losses. Indicatively for that case, 90.7% of the initial carbon is utilized for kerosene fraction synthesis, the overall thermal efficiency reaches up to 70.9% whereas the plant exergetic efficiency is 72.6%. The basic properties of the produced e-kerosene at all cases meet with the required Jet-A1 specifications or are close to them.