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research article

Techno-economic comparison of 100% renewable urea production processes

Zhang, Hanfei
•
Wang, Ligang
•
Van Herle, Jan  
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February 15, 2021
Applied Energy

Urea is widely used in agriculture, industry, and food, while it is also a potential fuel. Large-scale urea production relies on fossil fuels, thus there is a strong need for green urea given the increasing penetration of renewable energy sources. A potential alternative is biomass-to-urea; however, it cannot fully convert the biomass carbon into urea. To achieve full carbon conversion, innovative integrated biomass- and power-to-urea processes are designed conceptually. The two green urea production processes are evaluated techno-economically and compared with state-of-the-art methane-to-urea. The results show that the methane-to-urea achieves a system efficiency of 58% (LHV), while biomass-to-urea only has 39% (LHV) with unconverted biomass carbon of up to 60%. The integrated power- and biomass-to-urea has outstanding heat integration performance which fixes all biomass carbon into urea, with an efficiency enhanced up to 53%. Due to the electricity demand, the levelized cost of the urea of integrated biomass- and power-to-urea is 15 - 38 and 58 - 87% points higher than those of the biomass-to-urea and methane-to-urea for the scale of 10 - 60 MWth urea production. The available annual hours and electricity price of renewable electricity have a significant impact on the levelized cost of the urea. When the available annual hours decrease from 7200 to 3600 with an electricity price of 73 $/ MWh, the levelized cost of urea increases on average by 13% from 51 $/GJ with the plant capacity being 10 - 60 MWth urea. However, when electricity price is reduced from 73 $/ MWh to 35 $/ MWh with available annual hours of 3600, the levelized cost decreases on average by 15% from 59 $/GJ with the same plant capacity.

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Type
research article
DOI
10.1016/j.apenergy.2020.116401
Web of Science ID

WOS:000613290400003

Author(s)
Zhang, Hanfei
Wang, Ligang
Van Herle, Jan  
Marechal, Francois  
Desideri, Umberto
Date Issued

2021-02-15

Published in
Applied Energy
Volume

284

Article Number

116401

Subjects

Energy & Fuels

•

Engineering, Chemical

•

Energy & Fuels

•

Engineering

•

renewable urea

•

methane-to-urea

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biomass-to-urea

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power-to-urea

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power-to-hydrogen

•

solid-oxide electrolyzer

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ammonia production

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biomass

•

systems

•

power

•

cost

•

gasification

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electrolysis

•

optimization

•

performance

•

design

Editorial or Peer reviewed

REVIEWED

Written at

EPFL

EPFL units
SCI-STI-JVH  
SCI-STI-FM  
Available on Infoscience
June 19, 2021
Use this identifier to reference this record
https://infoscience.epfl.ch/handle/20.500.14299/179120
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