Zero Emission Hydrocarbon-Fueled Vehicle Transportation With Fuel Re-synthesis From On-board Sequestrated CO2
Multi-scale and/or multi-disciplinary approach to process-product innovation
Analysis of Environmental Issues (T3-3b)
Keywords: CO2 hydrogenation, re-syn fuel refinery, offshore wind energy
A combination of the Zero Emission Petrol Vehicle (ZEPV) concept, catalytic hydrogenation of CO2 and the methanol to gasoline process has been analysed to examine gasoline re-synthesis from recycled CO2. CO2 from closed-cycle gasoline combustion in a modified conventional IC engine can be readily liquefied and stored on-board. This liquid CO2 is available to be converted back to gasoline via methanol. Four possible chemical pathways for this re-synthesis are direct CO2 hydrogenation, the Camere process, methanation process and the H2O-CO2 electrolysis. The “ideal” and “practical” energy recycle penalty (η), which are obtained from material and energy balances for around 30 million vehicles in UK, are used to analyse these chemical pathways. Carrying out this recycling in a set of geographically distributed “re-syn fuel” refineries using offshore wind energy has no further cost for exploration and production of crude oil, no limitation of raw material and furthermore no cost penalty for the emitted carbon value. By predicting that the wind energy cost will be reduced as low at 2.5 p per kWh in the future (2020), it is estimated that the total production costs for this futuristic sustainable re-synthesis refinery would be decreased to 16 p per litre of gasoline. This cost is cheaper than for current conventional oil refineries (18.3 p per litre) and still less than the total cost for a “re-syn fuel” refinery powered by indigenous (non-sustainable) coal (21.8 p per litre). Based on the initial economic analysis, gasoline re-synthesis from recycled CO2 (to produce re-syn fuel) using offshore wind energy, is both perfectly sustainable and almost competitive for today and will be cheaper than petrol from crude oil in the future. Although this analysis is based on gasoline, the concept is straight forwardly extended to diesel. In this way, the present 25% of total UK CO2 emissions from road transport could be reduced to virtually zero.
Presented Tuesday 18, 10:05 to 10:25, in session Analysis of Environmental Issues (T3-3b).
