Techno-Economic Analysis of Bio-Methanol to Sustainable Aviation Fuel Process

Abstract

There are many sustainable aviation fuel production methods that are currently in use today, like the ethanol alcohol-to-jet process and Fischer-Tropsch. Demands from international aviation bodies and organizations are calling for more development and sources for producing sustainable aviation fuels, and the methanol-to-jet process is a pathway of interest. Currently, there exists no techno-economic work on such a plant model and insights on its profitability, break even costs, and most expensive contributing factors of running a methanol-to-jet plant are unknown. Extensive research and development work on a techno-economic tool from the German Aerospace Center called PyTEEA granted the option of doing economic calculations on an ASPEN plus simulation of the methanol-to-jet plant. The results found that both the cost of bio-methanol fuel or the production of bio-methanol to be the leading expense in running such a plant, with up to 75.95% of the break even cost of 3.26 EUR/kg being attributed to bio-methanol fuel costs alone. Although the methanol-to-jet pathway shows technical promise, it is currently less cost-competitive than other sustainable aviation fuel routes, such as ethanol-to-jet, largely due to the limited availability and high price of bio-methanol. As production capacity and market supply of bio-methanol expand, the methanol-to-jet pathway may become a more viable option for large-scale sustainable aviation fuel deployment.