(371ag) Development of a Systematic TEA Framework to Assess Emerging Designs for Electrified Chemical Processes

The chemical industry sector plays a vital role in the efforts for a net zero carbon economy. This is due to the fact that this sector is the one that consumes the most energy, and it is the third largest source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions [1,2]. Considering that chemical processes rely predominantly on fossil fuels for energy [3] and the costs of producing renewable energy from wind and solar are decreasing [4], the development and deployment of new electrified chemical processes arise as an opportunity for reducing GHG emissions while producing chemicals. Possible pathways include electro-decarbonization by replacing fuel-produced heat with electricity and electrochemically generating hydrogen and other value-added chemicals. However, appropriate techno-economic analysis tools that can account for the unique and emerging process design attributes of electro-decarbonization technologies, as well as the inherent uncertainty-related intermittence of renewables, are still necessary [5]. In this work, a novel systematic techno-economic analysis framework is proposed to assess the cost of emerging process designs for electrified technologies applied to manufacturing and chemical processes. This framework can then be used for subsequent process optimization to facilitate the deployment of a net zero carbon economy.

The developed framework consists of extending conventional cost techniques [6] to assess capital and operating costs for large-scale operation of new electrified technologies based on data from bench and pilot examples and using the economy of scale concepts. Profitability measures are scaled considering the manufactured product of interest using the electrified technologies against traditional processes to evaluate the feasibility and trade-offs for enabling novel process designs. Sensitivity analysis and uncertainty propagation will also be explored to assess the effect of key variables and economic parameters on profitability optimization and breakeven prices. Moreover, considering the inherent modularity of electrified process designs, economy of learning concepts are also explored to assess the effect of experience curves on purchase costs [7].

Three different emerging electrified technologies are considered for application of the TEA framework: (1) Low-temperature electrochemical CO2 reduction process for the production of C1 and C2 chemicals [8]; (2) SOEC cell manufacturing using Ultra-Rapid Sintering (UHS) [9]; and (3) Electrified spatiotemporal heating for depolymerization process [10]. The results obtained for these case studies include cost-effectiveness trends and trade-off analyses when compared to their traditional manufacturing counterparts. The observed results for the case studies suggest that the new emerging electrified technologies considered can be economically feasible under specified conditions. The developed TEA approach in this work can accelerate the deployment and optimization of new electrified chemical process designs of the future.

[1] International Energy Agency (2021). Net Zero by 2050: A Roadmap for the Global Energy Sector (International Energy Agency).

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[7] Gazzaneo, V., Watson, M., Ramsayer, C.B., Kilwein, Z.A., Alves, V., Lima, F.V., 2022. A techno‐economic analysis framework for intensified modular systems. J. Adv. Manuf. & Process. 4. https://doi.org/10.1002/amp2.10115

[8] Nascimento, C. A., and Lima, F.V., 2023. Application of a Developed Techno-Economic Analysis Framework to CO2 Electrochemical Reduction Processes. In Proceedings of AIChE 2023 Annual Meeting.

[9] Wang, C., Ping, W., Bai, Q., Cui, H., Hensleigh, R., Wang, R., Brozena, A.H., Xu, Z., Dai, J., Pei, Y., Zheng, C., Pastel, G., Gao, J., Wang, X., Wang, H., Zhao, J.-C., Yang, B., Zheng, X. (Rayne), Luo, J., Mo, Y., Dunn, B., Hu, L., 2020. A general method to synthesize and sinter bulk ceramics in seconds. Science 368, 521–526. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aaz7681.

[10] Dong, Q., Lele, A.D., Zhao, X., Li, S., Cheng, S., Wang, Y., Cui, M., Guo, M., Brozena, A.H., Lin, Y., Li, T., Xu, L., Qi, A., Kevrekidis, I.G., Mei, J., Pan, X., Liu, D., Ju, Y., Hu, L., 2023. Depolymerization of plastics by means of electrified spatiotemporal heating. Nature 616, 488–494. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-05845-8.