Economic and environmental assessment of bio-hydrogenated diesel production process from waste cooking oil integrated with reforming process

This work focuses on the performance analysis and life cycle assessment of two BHD production processes from waste cooking oil coupled with a reformer. The first process produces hydrogen from gas flare from the oil and gas industry, while the second process produces hydrogen from by-product propane. It was revealed that the second process requires less hydrogen by 15.27%, compared to the first process. However, its heating and cooling utilities were 22% and 10% higher than the first process. The economic assessment showed that the first process has a net present value of 2.39 times higher than the second one. Life cycle assessment is evaluated in terms of carbon footprint and other environmental impacts by using LCSoft program. It was found that the carbon footprint released by the second process was higher than the first process by 0.45 kgCO2 eq. The second process was also found to have higher environmental impacts in most categories. Thus, it can be concluded that the first process is preferable.