Overview of productivity, efficiency, and CO2 profile of middle distillates derived from different feedstocks
Aspect
Crude oil
CO 2
FOGs
Standard
Zeopore
Standard
Zeopore
Standard
Zeopore
Energy of feedstock sourcing GJ/ton feedstock
2 g
10 h
7 i
Energy of conversion GJ/ton feedstock
5 a,c
80 d
6 f
Sel ectivity to middle distillates and/or olefins, % Sel ectivity to undesired byproducts, % Energy input GJ/tonproduct j
90 c
93 e
80 d
83 e
65 f
68 e
10
7 e
20
17 e 108
35 20
32 e
8
8
113
19
Byp roducts CO₂ value ton CO₂/ton product k
0.4
0.2
0.8
0.7
1.7
1.5
CO ₂ upon burning the SAF ton CO₂/ton product Tota l: CO₂ ton/ton product
3.2 b
3,2 b
0
0
0
0
3.6
3.4 (-4%)
0.8
0.7 (-15%)
1.7
1.5 (-12%)
a) Energy density of oil: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonne_of_oil_equivalent b) CO₂ formation upon combustion of fuels or oils: https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/how-can-burning-one-ton-fuel-create-more-one-ton-co2. Here, assumed to be 3,2 ton CO₂ for oil, middle distillates, and byproducts for simplicity. c) Efficiency of fossil oil refinery: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/es501035a d) Efficiency of CO₂ to methanol to SAF: 10.1021/acssuschemeng.4c03939. e) Zeopore increases yields to middle distillates by 3 wt% at the expense of undesired byproducts, being mixtures of lights such as ethane, propane, and naphtha. f) Efficiency of FOGs to SAF: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.biortech.2016.05.090 g )Efficiency of producing fossil-based oil: https://theworld.org/stories/2013/08/15/energy-costs-oil-production h) Efficiency of CO₂ capture: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cej.2024.154421 i) Efficiency of producing FOGs: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.biortech.2016.05.090
j) Energy of conversion + feedstock sourcing normalised to yield of middle distillates + olefins. k) Energy of combustion of waste products normalised to yield of middle distillates + olefins.
Table 1
Yet, despite the clear catalytic superiority of accessible zeolites, their industrial adoption has remained hampered due to excessive cost and technical challenges of manu- facture. Accessible zeolites are often systematically linked to a synthesis that features copious amounts of expensive ingredients, low productivity, hard-to-scale operations, and/or inhibitive safety or environmental impacts. Within this domain, Zeopore has designed and manufac- tured high-quality, highly tunable, and accessible mesoporous zeolites, attaining proof of concept in versatile applications such as FCC, hydrocracking, and dewaxing (Figure 2), as well as with feedstock-specific circular applications, such as meth - anol-to-olefins, waste plastics, and biomass conversions. Case study on dewaxing Dewaxing relates to the improvement of cold flow prop - erties, making fuels and lubricants more processable and compliant with regulations. Dewaxing by hydro-isomerisa- tion using a specific type of unidirectional zeolites is often the method of choice, as these zeolites can lower cold-flow properties by branching linear alkanes without losing pre- cious feedstocks through undesired cracking to undesired byproducts, such as naphtha. Dewaxing serves as an insightful case study, as it is a ver- satile application that has already been used at an industrial scale for decades, and its use is foreseen to significantly
grow when fuels and lubrications are derived from circular feedstocks (see Figure 3 ). Unsurprisingly, next to dewax- ing, other versatile reactions, such as the reforming of lights and cracking of heavies, both zeolite-catalysed, will also remain of paramount importance. With this domain, accessible zeolites have already been applied, typically engineered by decreasing the crystal size, an approach that is relatively costly and also has plateaued in effectiveness. Here, Zeopore offers a fundamentally dif- ferent approach, using strictly low-cost and scalable meth- ods, reaching any desired level of accessibility (Figure 2). In dewaxing, superior accessible zeolites enable further maximisation of the yield of desired output, at the expense of undesired lights (such as light byproducts). Zeopore has attained several proof-of-principle results, yielding, on average, 3 wt% more middle distillates. This represents a value to the refiner of 500 USD/kg of mesoporous zeolite. Therefore, many times more than the cost of the innovation, and accordingly represents an attractive business case. The impact of a 3 wt% increase in middle distillate prod- uct at the expense of light byproducts is studied for three potential cases where dewaxing can be applied: the dewax- ing of streams from crude oil, CO₂, and fatty acids, oils, and greases (FOGs), as shown in Figure 4 . Today, each method has its limitations: whereas the processing of crude oil is already highly efficient, it is not circular. CO₂-derived middle
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