Integration of Fischer-Tropsch Diesel Production with a Complex Oil Refinery

Paper in proceeding, 2012

The oil refining industry is facing harder regulations on renewable content in its products. One way to meet this is to produce diesel and gasoline from gasification of biomass via a Fischer-Tropsch synthesis. In this paper, integrating a biomass-to-FT syncrude process with a refinery is compared to a stand-alone biomass-to-FT syncrude process, in terms of the consequences for CO2 emissions and energy balances. The upgrading of the FT syncrude is in both cases accomplished at the refinery, in the existing units or in new units. The studied system includes a circulating fluidized-bed biomass gasifier with a biomass input of 500 MW (50% moisture content) and a complex refinery with a crude oil capacity of 11.4 Mt/y. The integrated FT-syncrude production shows, regardless of assumptions of marginal electricity generation, the largest CO2 emission reduction. Moreover, if the almost clean CO2 stream from the biomass-to-FT-syncrude production is captured, the reduction potential can be significantly increased.