processes Article Evaluation of Techno-Economic Studies on the bioliq® Process for Synthetic Fuels Production from Biomass Nicolaus Dahmen * and Jörg Sauer Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Institute of Catalysis Research and Technology (IKFT), Hermann-von-Helmholtz-Platz 1, 76344 Eggenstein-Leopoldshafen, Germany;
[email protected] * Correspondence:
[email protected] Abstract: Techno-economic studies by various research institutions on the costs for the produc- tion of biomass to liquid (BtL) fuels using the bioliq® process were analyzed and evaluated. The bioliq® process consists of decentralized pretreatment by fast pyrolysis plants for biomass energy densification, and of a central gasification and synthesis step for synthesis of gas and synthetic fuel production. For comparison, specific material and energy flows were worked out for both process steps, and conversion efficiencies were calculated for the conversion of straw to diesel fuel via the Fischer-Tropsch synthesis. A significant variation of the overall process efficiency in the range of 33–46% was mainly a result of the different assumptions made for electricity generation at the central location. After breaking down the individual cost items to either fixed or variable costs, it turned out that the largest cost items in the production of BtL fuels were attributable to feedstock and capital costs. Comparison of the specific investments showed that, in addition to economies of scale, other factors had a significant influence leading to values between 1000 and 5000 EUR/kW. This, particularly, included the origin of the equipment purchase costs and the factors applied to them. Fuel production costs were found to range between 0.8 and 2.6 EUR/L.