Techno-economic analysis of bio-oil co-processing with vacuum gas oil to transportation fuels in an existing fluid catalytic cracker

The co-processing of bio-oil and vacuum gas oil (VGO) in an existing fluid catalytic cracker (FCC) for productions of gasoline and diesel has been proposed and regarded as a possible technique to realize partial replacement of fossil fuels. A techno-economic analysis (TEA) was conducted to evaluate the economics of two co-processing scenarios, the co-processing of VGO and the fast pyrolysis oil or the catalytic pyrolysis oil. As revealed by the TEA results, the capital cost can be reduced significantly by using the existing refinery infrastructures and the minimum gasoline selling prices under the two scenarios were $2.63 and $2.60 per gallon respectively, which can be competing with that of petroleum-derived gasoline. As shown by the sensitivity analysis, the gasoline price was extremely sensitive to the fluctuations of the fuel yields, VGO and diesel prices, and FCC capability. Therefore, the co-processing technique to produce bio-transportation fuels can be identified as a partial replacement for the petroleum-derived fuels.