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. 2023 Mar 1:220:115169.
doi: 10.1016/j.envres.2022.115169. Epub 2022 Dec 29.

Techno-economic assessment of hydrotreated vegetable oil as a renewable fuel from waste sludge palm oil

Cui Jun Hor  1 , Yie Hua Tan  2 , Nabisab Mujawar Mubarak  3 , Inn Shi Tan  1 , Mohd Lokman Ibrahim  4 , Peter Nai Yuh Yek  5 , Rama Rao Karri  6 , Mohammad Khalid  7
Affiliations

Techno-economic assessment of hydrotreated vegetable oil as a renewable fuel from waste sludge palm oil

Cui Jun Hor et al. Environ Res. .

Abstract

To date, the development of renewable fuels has become a normal phenomenon to solve the problem of diesel fuel emissions and the scarcity of fossil fuels. Biodiesel production has some limitations, such as two-step processes requiring high free fatty acids (FFAs), oil feedstocks and gum formation. Hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO) is a newly developed international renewable diesel that uses renewable feedstocks via the hydrotreatment process. Unlike FAME, FFAs percentage doesn't affect the HVO production and sustains a higher yield. The improved characteristics of HVO, such as a higher cetane value, better cold flow properties, lower emissions and excellent oxidation stability for storage, stand out from FAME biodiesel. Moreover, HVO is a hydrocarbon without oxygen content, but FAME is an ester with 11% oxygen content which makes it differ in oxidation stability. Waste sludge palm oil (SPO), an abundant non-edible industrial waste, was reused and selected as the feedstock for HVO production. Techno-economical and energy analyses were conducted for HVO production using Aspen HYSYS with a plant capacity of 25,000 kg/h. Alternatively, hydrogen has been recycled to reduce the hydrogen feed. With a capital investment of RM 65.86 million and an annual production cost of RM 332.56 million, the base case of the SPO-HVO production process was more desirable after consideration of all economic indicators and HVO purity. The base case of SPO-HVO production could achieve a return on investment (ROI) of 89.03% with a payback period (PBP) of 1.68 years. The SPO-HVO production in this study has observed a reduction in the primary greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide (CO2) emission by up to 90% and the total annual production cost by nearly RM 450 million. Therefore, SPO-HVO production is a potential and alternative process to produce biobased diesel fuels with waste oil.

Keywords: Hydrotreated vegetable oil; Sludge palm oil; Techno-economic.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

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