Opportunities and limitations for existing CHP plants to integrate polygeneration of drop-in biofuels with onsite hydrogen production

摘要

Over the past few years, there has been increasing research interest in retrofitting existing combined heat and power (CHP) plants with new technologies to co-produce other products. The focus has been on the design of fixed-sized processes for integration into CHP plants without affecting their performance. The primary objective of this study was to test the limits of a CHP plant with respect to retrofitting flexible thermochemical conversion of waste to drop-in biofuels with properties similar to petroleum fuels. Waste conversion to drop-in biofuels also requires significant amount of hydrogen for drop-in biofuels synthesis - Required hydrogen was also produced onsite in thermochemical processes integrated with CHP plant. The secondary objective was to determine the maximum number of days a flexible retrofitted waste-thermochemical process can run annually using only excess heat from a CHP plant, and whether such processes are profitable when operating flexibly. The results show that the selection of heat extraction points for the utilization of excess heat from the CHP plant for energy intensive processes is critical for maintaining the flexibility of the integrated thermochemical processes. Thermochemical processes integrated with CHP plants were able to operate on approximately 180 days of the year by utilizing only excess heat from the CHP plant. Integration of pyrolysis showed more flexibility than integration of gasification. Onsite hydrogen production was the main limiting factor for the integration of thermochemical process with the existing CHP plant to produce drop-in biofuels. Hydrogen produced with a solid oxide electrolysis cell (SOEC) decreased the overall system efficiency and limited the capacity of the overall process. However, hydrogen production from a water gas shift (WGS) reactor was more expensive. The results also indicated that small changes in the financial parameters have a large impact on the economic performance of the integrated process.