Issue 9, 2024

A sustainable aviation fuel pathway from biomass: life cycle environmental and cost evaluation for dimethylcyclooctane jet fuel

Abstract

Biomass is a promising renewable feedstock for conversion to sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) to mitigate near-term greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Through metabolic engineering, sugars derived from pretreated and hydrolyzed cellulose and hemicellulose can be directly fermented to isoprene and catalytically upgraded to 1-4-dimethylcyclooctane (DMCO), an environmentally beneficial and high performance alternative to petroleum-based jet fuel. Cellulosic sugars may allow for greater GHG emission reduction compared to first generation sugars and meet scaling needs to reduce dependence on petroleum-based kerosene. Here, we assess the environmental impact and economic feasibility of utilizing direct isoprene fermentation from residual biomass sugars as an intermediate step in the production of DMCO via life cycle assessment (LCA) and techno-economic analysis (TEA). We use chemical process modeling to simulate the conversion of sugars from biomass to isoprene, dimerization to dimethylcyclooctadiene (DMCOD) and catalytic hydrotreatment to DMCO. The bottom-up process model serves as the basis for constructing the life cycle inventory to assess environmental impacts and to predict economic feasibility. Results show a GHG intensity of 7.2 gCO2e MJ−1 that is significantly lower than that of current petroleum jet (89 gCO2e MJ−1) when using Zea mays L. residue (corn stover) as feedstock. The TEA indicated that the target costs have the potential to be competitive with a minimum fuel selling price of DMCO between $1.01 and $1.32 per L. Direct fermentation of isoprene could improve the overall process efficiency and reduce energy consumption, while also enhancing the environmental sustainability of the process.

Graphical abstract: A sustainable aviation fuel pathway from biomass: life cycle environmental and cost evaluation for dimethylcyclooctane jet fuel

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
13 Nov 2023
Accepted
12 Mar 2024
First published
20 Mar 2024
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY license

Sustainable Energy Fuels, 2024,8, 1924-1935

A sustainable aviation fuel pathway from biomass: life cycle environmental and cost evaluation for dimethylcyclooctane jet fuel

R. Batten, M. Karanjikar and S. Spatari, Sustainable Energy Fuels, 2024, 8, 1924 DOI: 10.1039/D3SE01470C

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence. You can use material from this article in other publications without requesting further permissions from the RSC, provided that the correct acknowledgement is given.

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