Techno-economic analysis and life cycle assessment of coal-to-aromatics process with integration of renewable energy-based hydrogen generation technology

This study proposes two Coal-to-Aromatics processes integrated with Green Hydrogen (GH-CTA) to address the shortcomings of traditional processes, such as high carbon emissions and an unreasonable process structure. Additionally, one of the designs incorporates co-feeding of coal and wheat straw (GH-BCTA). The proposed processes are integrated with renewable energy-based hydrogen production technologies to balance the hydrogen and carbon elements in the system, resulting in near-zero carbon emissions. Through detailed process modeling, the technical performance, production costs, and environmental impact of the GH-CTA and GH-BCTA processes were analyzed and compared to the basic processes. The results demonstrate that both GH-CTA and GH-BCTA processes offer significant technical and economic advantages over the basic process. Notably, the GHBCTA process shows the most promise with a carbon utilization efficiency, energy efficiency, and net present value of 96.58 %, 84.57 %, and 3400.59 M$, respectively. CO2 emissions decrease significantly to 3.21 kg/kgaromatics, and water consumption decreases to -1.44 kg/kg-aromatics. The influence of fluctuating key economic factors on the economic performance of the two proposed processes was investigated through sensitivity analysis. The results indicate that the proposed processes demonstrate greater resilience to fluctuations in coal and aromatics prices. Furthermore, the environmental analysis revealed that the GH-CTA process exhibits lower life cycle energy consumption and carbon intensity compared to the other proposed processes. As a result, both the GH-CTA and GH-BCTA processes have the potential to significantly enhance the techno-economic and environmental performance of the traditional process, making them promising candidates for industrialization.