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The Growth and Production of Crude Oil from Algae Using Hydrothermal Liquefaction and Catalytic Hydrothermal Liquefaction Item Type text; Electronic Thesis Authors Cordon, Michael; Zuun, LI; List, Tyler; Zhang, Aaron Publisher The University of Arizona. Rights Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author. Download date 28/09/2021 01:29:12 Item License http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/297546 Abstract: This report evaluates the current economic outlook of producing algal biofuels as a potential replacement for fossil fuels. The proposed design incorporates two new technologies: hydrothermal liquefaction and catalytic hydrothermal gasification. Both of these technologies provide significant advantages over other dewatering, extraction, and residual biomass processing methods that are typically considered in past models. The design also accounts for the maximal recycle of resources in the system including water, nutrients, carbon dioxide, and heat. Based on current market info, it was shown that the design is not economically feasible at this time. The plant would break even (NPV of $0 at a 40% tax rate) after 30 years if the selling price of the oil is $174 per barrel. A Monte Carlo simulation was established to monitor the effects that different operating conditions have on the commercial viability of the process. In approximately 5% of the scenarios, a positive economic outlook was found for the proposed plant. These parameters include the efficiency of the electric generator, the price of the oil, the price of electricity, the yield out of hydrothermal liquefaction, and the yield of algal biomass out of the growth raceways. 1 Executive Summary: The main goal of this design is to produce 0.1% of Florida’s daily oil use in a sustainable way. The design utilizes algae to produce fatty acids that can be converted into heavy crude sweet oil downstream. The process utilizes two newer technologies for processing algae in order to analyze their potential impacts and improvements on the algae biofuel production process. These two processes are hydrothermal liquefaction (HTLE) and catalytic hydrothermal gasification (CHG). HTLE is used to convert residual biomass into oil derivatives such as fatty acids to increase the product yield from the algae. CHG converts the remaining residual biomass into a combination of methane and carbon dioxide to eliminate the solid waste from the system. This methane can also be burned to produce heat for use in the plant and to generate electricity in a power generator. The design is broken down into four major areas that work in tandem to produce the oil. The first section is the algae growth which occurs in large raceway systems. The growth setup utilizes carbon dioxide from a source of flue gas and a recycle stream for media recovery and reuse as a means of providing the algae with the appropriate nutrients to facilitate rapid growth and fatty acid production. The output from these raceway systems is fed into the second section of the process which is the cold operations section. In this part of the plant, a filter system is utilized to make the algae more concentrated in the liquid stream by filtering out large portions of the unneeded growth media. This is performed using a filtration process similar to that of reverse osmosis. The cold operations also handle the recycle of water from throughout the plant in a mixer. This mixer is used to generate new media to feed back into the growth section. A generator is also located in this section to convert excess heat from other parts of the plant to generate electricity. These two recycle systems make the plant highly sustainable and independent of the market. The third stage of the plant is the hot operations section. This section sees the use of both HTLE and CHG to process the algal biomass. The major pieces of equipment include multiple heat exchangers, reactors, and tanks to perform separations in the working fluids. The working conditions in this part of the plant are typically at least 150 bar and 300°C. A combustion reactor is also placed here to combust methane and convert it into a renewable source of electricity. The last section of the plant deals with the downstream processing of the separated crude oil. Since the algal biofuel has a high concentration of nitrogen and oxygen, the fluid is fed through a reactor that performs both denitrification and deoxygenation. This 2 effectively cleans the oil and turns it into a higher quality product, allowing it to be sold for a higher price. Generally speaking, the safety and environmental concerns of the plant are minimal. The chemicals in the growth media have essentially no harmful effects, especially when dissolved in water. The catalysts provide a larger threat to the health of the operators and the surrounding environment yet they are exclusively located inside of the reactors under high pressures and temperatures. Therefore, there is little chance for contact between the catalysts and the outside world. From an environmental standpoint, the plant is essentially carbon neutral since it takes in carbon dioxide from flue gas to grow the algae. The water requirements are negligible compared to the other flow rates throughout the system and the plant actually makes enough electricity to sell back to the grid. This makes the plant highly sustainable and independent. The project lifetime chosen for the process is thirty years. With a 40% tax rate and normal and current values for all utilities and sale prices, an NPV of -$98.9 million was found. The sale price to get the NPV to a value of zero was found to be $174. The main cost of the process which led to the highly negative NPV is the bare module cost of the equipment. A Monte Carlo simulation was done as a complementary economic analysis to test the sensitivity of key variables in the process. The variables deemed most likely to change throughout the lifetime of the plant are oil price, electricity price, HTLE yield, algae growth yield, and generator efficiency. 9943 trials were run to reduce the sampling error and an average NPV of -$45.8 million was found. The NPV was found to be between -$100.1 million and $9.6 million for 95% of the trials. Approximately 5% of the trials yielded a positive NPV after thirty years. The most apparent economic hazard of the process is the volatility in the markets. The oil market is a highly specific, rapidly changing world market that is too complex for any one person to speculate on. It is therefore likely that any projections on oil price will be unreliable in a thirty year window. 3 Group Roles and Responsibilities: This project was designed based off of contributions from four different team members. The primary work was divided into several different sections with each member offering several contributions to the final objective. Michael made several major contributions to the project overall. First off, he developed the models for the growth calculations and the design of the raceway systems. He also built the model for the CHG process and for the upstream processing stages of the plant. This includes the filtration system, the precipitation tank and sulfur scrubber combination, the heat exchangers and pumps, and the water recycle system. In addition to this, he created the process flow diagrams and the block flow diagram. From these diagrams, he wrote the process description, rationale, and optimization, the equipment description, rationale, and optimization, and the introduction. He also wrote several of the appendices for the final submission. For the team experience, Michael organized many of the meetings by leading the conversations through the required topics as well as taking meeting minutes to keep everyone on track. He also organized the compilation of the final report and kept the team on track for completion. He also edited all other portions of the report that were submitted and helped to answer questions from all other teammates. Tyler helped the team by keeping track of the master spreadsheet. He designed the HTLE and downstream processing sections of the plant by scaling up the two processes accordingly. The downstream processing included the denitrification and deoxygenation section and the surrounding heat exchangers and pressure equipment. By maintaining the master spreadsheet, Tyler made sure that each of the models for the various sections of the design were conglomerated together properly. This allowed for one change in the spreadsheet to affect everything else properly. Tyler also wrote several sections of the report itself. He developed the Monte Carlo simulation code and wrote the corresponding section to go with it. He also wrote the recommendations and conclusions sections and the calculations appendix to go with the spreadsheet. Zijun aided in the project’s completion by building a model of the combustion reactor and its inlets and outlets. This allowed for the final energy balance to be completed which led to the ability to determine the amount of electricity that can be used and sold. From here, he developed all of the economic calculation tables and the performed the analysis on those 4 sections. Then, he wrote up his findings in the economic analysis section and also in the economic calculations appendix. Aaron contributed to the project through support calculations here and there to supplement the rest of the team. He also performed extensive research into areas where the team required additional information for continued work.