Techno-economic Analysis of a Bioethanol to Hydrogen Centralized Plant

The possibility to obtain chemicals and/or fuels from renewable sources is an attractive option in order to develop an integrated biorefinery concept. Bioethanol can be a suitable starting material for the production of H2 as fuel or syngas. Hydrogen is considered as a future energy vector that can meet the ever growing world energy demand in a clean and sustainable way. Moreover, it can be used as a green chemical for several other processes. In this work, the centralized production of pure hydrogen from bioethanol was investigated using the process simulation software AspenONE Engineering Suite. After designing the process and the implementation of kinetic expressions based on experimental data collected in our lab and derived from the literature, an economic evaluation and sensitivity analysis were carried out, assessing conventional economic indicators such as the net present value, internal rate of return, and pay-out period of the plant. In particular, three scenarios were studied by changing the fuel of the furnace that heats up the ethanol steam reformer, i.e., using methane, ethanol, or part of the produced hydrogen. Heat integration was also optimized for the best scenario. Sensitivity analysis was applied to investigate the economic performance of bioethanol steam reforming under different circumstances, changing feedstock cost, hydrogen selling price, taxes, and capital expenditure. The results highlight the advantages and drawbacks of the process on a large scale (mass flow rate of bioethanol 40 000 ton year-1) for pure hydrogen production from bioethanol. The higher return is achieved when using methane as auxiliary fuel. The process was strongly OPEX sensitive and very tightly correlated to the bioethanol cost and hydrogen selling price.