Mitigating climate change for negative CO2 emission via syngas methanation: Techno-economic and life-cycle assessments of renewable methane production

Abstract

Recently, electric fuels (E-fuel), which are the chemicals produced from the conversion of renewable-based hydrogen (H2), are actively being developed as a sustainable energy carrier. Renewable methane is particularly a promising alternative to fossil-based natural gas, which can be produced from CO2 or syngas methanation. In this work, techno-economic assessment (TEA) and life-cycle assessment (LCA) for renewable methane production are performed through syngas methanation, where CO2 is collected using direct air capture (DAC) and syngas is produced by solid oxide electrolysis (SOE) with renewable-based electricity. This research considers the different technical, economic, and environmental performances of the systems for renewable methane production. A favorable reduction in a maximum of 23.3% of CH4 production cost is observed by the scale-up effects of SOE system from 1 MW to 10 MW. TEA draws the conclusion that economic infeasibility is proved at the current level, but additional research and improvement of SOE system and a plunge in renewable electricity prices can lead to the economic equivalent of conventional natural gas. Furthermore, given that certain energy resources with low energy intensity (0.0394 kg CO2-eq MJ-1) are integrated with SOE system for methane production, the LCA results that renewable methane production at a large scale has a potential to access negative CO2 emissions and accelerate climate change mitigation. Consequently, it is concluded that syngas methanation with renewable-based energy systems and DAC can make a considerable opportunity for climate change mitigation under the assumption that SOE system and renewable energy are significantly improved.