Environmental Performance Assessment of a Novel Process Concept for Propanol Production from Widely Available and Wasted Methane Sources

[Image: see text] Currently, propanol production highly depends on conventional fossil resources. Therefore, an alternative production process, denoted as “C123”, is proposed and evaluated in which underutilized and methane-rich feedstocks such as biogas (scenario BG), marginal gas (scenario MG), and associated gas (scenario AG) are converted into propanol. A first modular-scale process concept was constructed in Aspen Plus, based on experimental data and know-how of the C123 consortium partners. The environmental performance of the considered scenarios was compared at the life cycle level by calculating key performance indicators (KPIs), such as the global warming burden. The results showed that scenario BG is the least dependent on fossil fuels for energy use. Scenario AG seems the most promising one based on almost all selected KPIs when taking into account the avoided gas flaring emissions. The performance of the C123 process concept could be improved by applying heat integration in the process concept.