Comparative Life Cycle Assessment of Co-Processing of Bio-Oil and Vacuum Gas Oil in an Existing Refinery

The co-cracking of vacuum gas oil (VGO) and bio-oil has been proposed to add renewable carbon into the co-processing products. However, the environmental performance of the co-processing scheme is still unclear. In this paper, the environmental impacts of the co-processing scheme are calculated by the end-point method Eco-indicator 99 based on the data from actual industrial operations and reports. Three scenarios, namely fast pyrolysis scenario, catalytic pyrolysis scenario and pure VGO scenario, for two cases with different FCC capacities and bio-oil co-processing ratios are proposed to present a comprehensive comparison on the environmental impacts of the co-processing scheme. In Case 1, the total environmental impact for the fast pyrolysis scenario is 1.14% less than that for the catalytic pyrolysis scenario while it is only 26.1% of the total impacts of the pure VGO scenario. In Case 2, the environmental impact of the fast pyrolysis scenario is 0.07% more than that of the catalytic pyrolysis and only 64.4% of the pure VGO scenario impacts. Therefore, the environmental impacts can be dramatically reduced by adding bio-oil as the FCC co-feed oil, and the optimal bio-oil production technology is strongly affected by FCC capacity and bio-oil co-processing ratio.

Automated summary

The study demonstrates that adding bio-oil as a co-feed oil for FCC can significantly reduce environmental impacts, with the optimal bio-oil production technology strongly influenced by FCC capacity and bio-oil co-processing ratio.