System development and environmental performance analysis of a solar-driven supercritical water gasification pilot plant for hydrogen production using life cycle assessment approach

• DOI: 10.1016/j.enconman.2019.01.041
• Publication Date: 2019-02-01T01:38:40Z
• Authors: Jingwei Chen; Wenwen Xu; Hongyan Zuo; Xiaomin Wu; Jiaqiang E; Taosheng Wang; Feng Zhang; Na Lu
• Keywords: 13. Climate action; 11. Sustainability; 0202 electrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineering; 02 engineering and technology; 7. Clean energy

Abstract Supercritical water gasification (SCWG) of biomass is a promising technology for hydrogen production. A novel pilot plant of SCWG that uses solar energy (henceforth SCWG-Solar) was constructed in State Key Laboratory of Multiphase Flow in Power Engineering to take SCWG a significant step closer to industrialization. The total throughput of biomass and water was designed up to 1 t/h. Life cycle assessment (LCA) was conducted to evaluate the environmental performance of SCWG-Solar process and its main environmental burdens. LCA was conducted using the SimaPro V8.2.3 software, and the Ecoinvent 3.0 database within the program. A sensitivity analysis on crucial parameters was performed to determine the environmental performance enhancement of SCWG-Solar process. LCA results showed that the SCWG-Solar system operation contributes approximately 58% to the total environmental impact. The construction of a solar concentrator mostly contributes to the environment emissions from the construction of the SCWG-Solar system. The environmental impact can be reduced by utilizing solar energy heated preheater and combining suitable post-treatment technologies of methane byproducts with the SCWG-Solar system. The GWP decreases with the increase of feeding biomass slurry concentration and the GWP is close to a minimum when the biomass concentration reaches 30 wt%. GWP from the SCWG-Solar operation, which is 4.41 kg CO2-eq/kgH2 for 1-MC process, is comparable to the solar based hydrogen production by two-step water splitting. Hence, the LCA in this study indicates that the SCWG-Solar is an environmentally friendly technology, although the system still has room for improvement.