Producing hydrocarbon fuel from the plastic waste: Techno-economic analysis

Dumping plastic waste into landfills can lead to severe health and environmental problems. Plastic waste can be treated by the pyrolysis process to produce fuel. A techno-economic and feasibility assessment was performed for plastic-waste pyrolysis followed by hydrodeoxygenation to upgrade the fuel using the software Aspen Plus. A simulation was conducted using Aspen Plus to estimate the plant’s mass and energy balance; it is assumed that 1,000 dry metric tons of plastic waste is processed per day. Plastic waste contains 40% polystyrene (PS), 20% polyethylene (PE), 20% polypropylene (PP), and 20% polyethylene terephthalate (PET). The process is simulated in five steps: pretreatment, pyrolysis, hydrogen production, and hydrodeoxygenation of oil and energy generation. The mass and the energy yields of this process are 36% and 42%, respectively. The capital investment of the plant and the production cost were calculated based on the Aspen Plus model. Based on the economic estimation, the capital investment of this process is $118 million and the production cost is $27 million. For the 20-year project, the minimum selling price (MSP) of the fuel was calculated to be $0.60/gal. Sensitivity analysis was performed to verify the economic assumptions on the MSP. The MSP is highly sensitive to the feedstock cost, plant capacity, and product yield. As the plant capacity or product yield increases, the MSP decreases significantly.