Techno-economic analysis of catalytic hydrothermolysis pathway for jet fuel production

Abstract The aviation industry is moving towards increasing the use of renewable fuels to reduce its environmental impact and find alternative supply chains for aviation fuel. Analyzing the technical and economic viability of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) conversion pathways provides critical understanding and new insight toward long-term sustainability and commercialization of SAF. This study reviews the catalytic hydrothermolysis (CH) pathway for sustainable aviation fuel production and conducted a detailed techno-economic analysis to determine the economic viability of SAF production from four selected feedstocks - carinata oil, soybean oil, yellow grease, and brown grease. Economic analyses were performed for ‘nth plant’ (mature technology) to assess process costs and sensitivity on minimum selling price (MSP) of SAF. Without incentives, the MSP of SAF produced from soybean oil, carinata oil, yellow grease, and brown grease are $1.50/L, $1.32/L, $1.19/L for and $1.00/L respectively. Regardless of feedstock, the MSP is shown to be more sensitive to the yield of SAF and feedstock cost, than to capital and supplementary costs. Based on the analysis, the CH process is a promising technology to convert renewable oils to SAF, however the projected MSP requires incentives to achieve parity with petroleum jet fuel.