Advancing the defossilization of the glass industry based on the integration of synthetic fuels production

Defossilization of the industry sector will play a great role in realizing the future global carbon-neutrality. CO 2 emissions in glass industry, as one of the energy-intensive industries, are mainly attributed to the fossil fuel combustion and the decomposition of the glassmaking batch. These hard-to-abate CO 2 emissions can be valorized and transformed into synthetic fuels (synfuels). In this study, we model the synthesis of potential fuels (synthetic natural gas/SNG and synthetic methanol/ syn -MeOH) from such a CO 2 rich flue gas and electrolytic H 2 . With these synfuels, we aim to close the combustion-related carbon cycle in the glass industry. To assess the process performance, the synfuel plants are modelled and simulated in Aspen Plus® based on the state-of-the-art TREMP TM methanation and the Lurgi TM methanol process. The in-house tool TEPET+ (Techno-Economic and Ecological Process Evaluation Tool) assists with conducting the techno-economic assessment, including sensitivity analyses of the electricity price against the net production cost and the CO 2 abatement cost. Depending on the case, the synfuel plants could achieve Power-to-Fuel efficiencies of 45–54 % LHV . At an electricity price of 60 € 2022 MWh el −1 , the production of one tonne glass with synfuels would entail energy cost of 362–492 € 2022 , which is 2.1–2.9 times higher than the use of fossil natural gas (without CO 2 emission fees). Consequently, the CO 2 abatement cost range of 738–996 € 2022 t CO2 −1 is expected. The techno-economic and sensitivity analysis’ results indicate that the use of SNG has an economic advantage over the use of syn -MeOH under the taken assumptions and basic conditions.