Optimal integration modeling of Co- Electrolysis in a power-to-liquid industrial process

High temperature co-electrolysis using solid-oxide electrolysis cells is a highly efficient pathway for green syngas production owing to the possibility of heat integration with other processes. Therefore, this study described and evaluates a flexible and efficient configu-ration for producing sustainable synthetic fuels using electricity from renewables and captured CO2 by integrating co-electrolysis in a power-to-liquid industrial plant. There-after, novel and efficient technologies were implemented for green syngas production and its subsequent purification, increasing the overall process efficiency and achieving a sig-nificant reduction in the carbon footprint compared to mature synthetic crude production processes. Catalytic partial oxidation and dual pressure swing adsorption were integrated with co-electrolysis and Fischer-Tropsch synthesis in a scaled industrial plant, using re-sidual streams from the complex or those of renewable origin as feed, which allowed the continuous operation of the process independent of renewable power generation. The mass and energy balance, performance, and efficiency estimations were also included in this study. A solid-oxide electrolytic cell (SOEC) plant using renewable electricity and heat input from thermal integration with the outlet syngas stream of the catalytic partial oxidation reactor was selected as a case study. Both the performance and efficiency ana-lyses of the co-electrolysis unit demonstrated the benefits of such thermal integration in comparison with current solutions. In this study, both the thermal integration of the process streams, as well as the energy and heat consumed by the syngas purification process were considered.(c) 2023 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of Hydrogen Energy Publications LLC. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).