Novel Hybrid Municipal Solid Waste, Coal, and Natural Gas Processes for the Production of Liquid Transportation Fuels

Abstract

In this paper, I expand upon work previously done by Professor Floudas' group in developing a large-scale model for the conversion of various feedstocks into transportation fuels. Where the group had previously published work on the conversion of natural gas, coal, and biomass (and hybridized combinations thereof), I introduce a fourth feedstock, municipal solid waste (MSW). By treating MSW as a different variety of biomass, I use experimental data from the pyrolysis of MSW into syngas to extract parameters for the computational modeling of the gasification process. These data were selected for the best performance of both the model and the gasifier, and were published by Liu et al. [21, 19, 23] Using the new gasification parameters, I introduce MSW as a feedstock into a process synthesis model for the optimization of processes operating under different hybrid feedstocks: MSW, MSW and coal, MSW and natural gas, and finally all three. The processes described by this model generate transportation fuels on par with current U.S. ratios while generating significantly less lifecycle CO2 than current petroleum-based technologies. An economic analysis is performed to determine the break-even oil price for the process in different states, and it is determined that the process can be competitive for crude oil prices between $85 and $105 per barrel.