Techno-environmental-economic assessment on municipal solid waste to methanol coupling with/without solid oxygen electrolysis cell unit

Integrating municipal solid waste (MSW) gasification with renewable energy to synthesize methanol shows great potential in alleviating the dependence on fossil energy and reducing the negative environmental impact of increasing MSW production. In this study, three technological processes including MSW-tomethanol integrated with carbon capture and storage (MTMC), MSW-to-methanol integrated with solid oxygen electrolysis cell unit (MTMS) and MSW incineration to power (MTP) are compared from the perspective of techno-environmental-economic performance. Results show that MTMS process owns the maximum exergy efficiency (60.8%), followed by MTMC (41.5%) and MTP (18.9%). In terms of global warming potential (GWP), MTP process has the worst environmental performance with 19,164.84 kgCO2eq/h. The economic analysis shows that MTMS process owns the highest value of levelized profit of MSW (LPOM) with 38.64 USD/t under the current market conditions. In addition, comparative analysis shows the production cost of methanol (PCOM) of MTMC and MTMS routes is 406.09 USD/t and 355.89 USD/t, respectively, which are economically competitive compared with the coal / biomass / CO2 hydrogenation to methanol route. Sensitivity analysis shows that MTMS process processes its advantage on economic performance only if the methanol price is higher than 350 USD/t and photovoltaic on-grid tariff is lower than 0.055 USD/kWh. (c) 2022 Institution of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.