TEPET - evaluation tool for the techno-economic and ecological analysis of process engineering processes

TEPET

The Techno Economic Process Evaluation Tool (TEPET), developed at the Institute of Engineering Thermodynamics by the group Techno-Economic Analysis (TEA), enables an automated technical, economic as well as ecological process analyses. For this purpose, the processes are simulated in Aspen Plus®. The resulting material and energy flows and information on the process units are extracted from the process simulation. Automated sensitivity analyses can be realised by changing parameter/variables in the simulation through TEPET. As a result, this allows to automatically calculate for example the capital and operational expenditures, the net production cost and environmental impacts like the global warming potential.

Process simulation sequence
Methodology for determining manufacturing costs and determining the ecological footprint

Research goals

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enconman.2021.114651TEPET allows to investigate processes from a technical (material and energy efficiencies), economic (net production cost, capital investment and operational cost) and ecological (e.g. global warming potential) perspective. A particular research focus is on processes for the production of alternative fuels (Fischer-Tropsch fuel, methane, methanol, ammonia, …) from electricity and/or biomass. Therein, the work targets to conduct in-depth process analyses (e.g. to identify and quantify cost and environmental impact drivers) as well as to improve the processes (e.g. efficiency increase through heat integration or optimal operating conditions of certain process units).

Simulation Framework Details

  • Automated calculation of the net production cost on the basis of an internal database
  • Automated life cycle assessment to quantify environmental impacts using Brightway 2 on the basis of internal and commercial (ecoinvent) databases
  • Uncertainty analysis

Exemplary result

Minimum net production cost of Fischer-Tropsch fuel from electricity (PtL), biomass (BtL) and combined electricity and biomass (PBtL) in dependence of electricity cost and plant size

Projects

Publications