Open AccessMulti‐objective optimization of green urea production
Author(s) -
Alfian Mohammad,
Purwanto Widodo W.
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
energy science and engineering
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.638
H-Index - 29
ISSN - 2050-0505
DOI - 10.1002/ese3.281
Subject(s) - greenhouse gas , renewable energy , biomass (ecology) , environmental science , raw material , substitute natural gas , production (economics) , waste management , biofuel , engineering , economics , chemistry , syngas , ecology , hydrogen , macroeconomics , organic chemistry , electrical engineering , biology
The availability of natural gas as feedstock for nitrogen fertilizer production continues to decline, while its price increases, encouraging the search for renewable feedstocks for the future green urea industry. Renewable feedstocks include waste biomass, hydrogen from solar PV ‐electrolysis, and the combination of these feedstocks with natural gas. The selection of a green production strategy is a critical step in the trade‐off between economic and environmental considerations. The aim of this work was to propose a green urea production strategy using a multi‐objective optimization ( MOO ) model to minimize production costs and environmental impacts by considering the future cost development of technologies and feedstock price for each technology in the time frame of 2020‐2050. The results show that green urea production can reduce production costs and greenhouse gas emissions, compared to conventional urea production. Biomass gasification technology fulfills the minimum requirements for production cost and CO 2 emissions from 2020 to 2035 and combined biomass gasification‐ PV electrolysis without battery technology is the optimum process from 2040 to 2050.