Journal of Cleaner Production 289 (2021) 125778

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Journal of Cleaner Production

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jclepro

Techno-economic analysis of used cooking oil to jet fuel production

under uncertainty through three-, two-, and one-step conversion
processes
Hsin-Wei Hsu a, Yu-Hsuan Chang b, Wei-Cheng Wang b, *
a
Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Chung Yuan Christian University, Taoyuan City, 40704, Taiwan
b
Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, 70101, Taiwan

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: The application of renewable jet fuel is an eco-friendly technique that can reduce greenhouse gas
Received 9 July 2020 emissions. Based on existing commercial processes, this study aimed to evaluate the hydro-conversion
Received in revised form processes for producing renewable jet fuel. Three process scenarios were compared, in which the
17 December 2020
feedstock used cooking oil (UCO) is converted to hydroprocessed renewable jet fuel (HRJ) and its
Accepted 29 December 2020
Available online 5 January 2021
byproducts. Then, the investment feasibility of the three processes was evaluated through an economic
analysis and predicted by an uncertainty analysis. The results show that if the main product (HRJ) is the
Handling editor: M.T. Moreira profit target, one-step conversion is the best choice. However, if we consider the overall economic
benefits, the three-step conversion method is more suitable with an average more 11.94% chance of
Keywords: profiting than the one-stage under uncertain analysis, which means it is a considerably competitive
Hydroprocessed renewable jet approach with lower risk and only 0.31 $/L of minimum selling price of jet fuel (MJSP), because it has the
Used cooking oil advantages of a wider range application and higher value of byproducts which reduce the risk of a single
Techno-economic analysis factor contribution. From the sensitivity analysis, jet fuel price is the key factor which contributes 75
Aircraft emissions
e82% for one- and two-stage processes, but UCO price in three-stage process reach nearly 50%. In
Supply chain analysis
addition, due to the economic scale, scaling up the plant capacity will lead higher economic benefits.
Biofuel
Therefore, an efficient UCO recovery system and three-stage process are the keys for the industrial
development aspect through the value-chain analysis under uncertainty.
© 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction 2015). For example, well-known commercial energy producing

Renewable aviation fuel has been widely employed and devel-
oped because of the issues of greenhouse gas emissions and the
global demand for fossil fuels. At the same time, renewable aviation
fuels will play a key role in reducing the carbon emissions pledged
by countries in the future. The most common renewable jet fuel
conversion technologies involve the conversion of hydro-processed
esters and fatty acids to jet fuel (HEFA), alcohol to jet fuel, and direct
sugar to hydrocarbons (DSHC) and the FischereTropsch process to
produce jet fuel (F-T) (Mawhood et al., 2016). Different processes
have been developed based on different characteristics of raw
material; renewable sources can be solids or liquids (Hari et al.,
* Corresponding author. Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, National
Cheng Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan.
E-mail addresses: wilsonwang@mail.ncku.edu.tw, wwang77777@gmail.com
(W.-C. Wang).
companies such as Honeywell UOP and NESTE have registered
Honeywell Green Jet Fuel™ and Neste MY Renewable Jet Fuel™ in
the market, respectively. Both these fuels are produced from the
HEFA conversion process, and the feedstocks include residual lipids,
vegetable oils, and animal fats. Nowadays, many successful flights
have been accomplished using blended fuels using a specific per-
centage of renewable fuels with a traditional one.
The commercialized processes of producing renewable fuels
involve two major pathways, which called two-stage process in this
paper. First, the feedstock is processed in the hydro-processed
reactor with hydro-treatment and deoxygenation reactions, and
the alkane products are obtained preliminarily. Adding hydrogen
into the raw liquid material can convert unsaturated and saturated
fatty acids to fatty acids with propane; this process is called hy-
drogenation and hydrogenolysis (Boda et al., 2010). The methods of
deoxygenationdhydrodeoxygenation (HDO), decarboxylation
(DCO2), and decarbonylation (DCO)dproduce water, carbon

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2020.125778
0959-6526/© 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
H.-W. Hsu, Y.-H. Chang and W.-C. Wang
dioxide, and carbon monoxide as byproducts, respectively (Srifa
et al., 2015). By distilling the aforementioned products, the mix-
tures of liquids can be separated into the target components. Next,
the alkane products are obtained, which are made of C16 to C18
straight chain hydrocarbons, the properties of which are similar to
those of diesel. In this study, we refer to the product as hydro-
processed renewable diesel fuel (HRD) (Hilbers et al., 2015). A hy-
drocracking/isomerization reaction was performed, which can
break the long chain components into short chain products and
isomers. The main component of the jet fuel has a carbon number
ranging from C8 to C15 (Zhang et al., 2015), and it is called hydro-
processed renewable jet fuel (HRJ) in this study (Xing et al.,
2019). Currently, few studies have developed upgraded HRJ pro-
duction methods with a one-step route, in which liquid vegetable
oil can be converted to HRJ in a single reactor. According to Verma
et al. (2011), by changing the catalyst mixture, a maximum con-
version of 99% and maximum selectivity of 77% can be obtained.
The one-step process is advantageous over the two-step process of
hydro-conversion of fuels because it uses only one reactor and is a
simple process.
Previous research showed that during hydrolysis, triglycerides
(TG) contained in fats and oils can be hydrolyzed with subcritical
water into saturated and unsaturated free fatty acids (FFAs) and
glycerin (Wang et al., 2012b); in addition, this reaction can be
performed without a catalyst (Wang et al., 2012b). Unsaturated
FFAs are better than saturated FFAs with single bonds in terms of
edible oil additive, according to previous studies (Haraldsson,
1984). Another product is the intermediate of saturated fatty
acids, which could be treated by deoxygenation via the thermal
catalytic method to produce hydrocarbon components (Wang et al.,
2012a). Many studies have highlighted that hydrolysis is a good
technology for treating oils and fats, after which hydrocarbon
components can be separated into different products with prop-
erties of fuels by distillation. With one more stage of hydrolysis to
the two-stage process, we called it as three-stage process. The
subsequent process is similar to hydroprocessing.
However, these three processes (one-, two- and three-step)
have some similarities in terms of the product and feedstock
treatment. In addition, the byproducts benefits resulted to the
reduction of production cost. Therefore, some studies have
analyzed these methods by comparing them with supply chain and
value chain analysis. The supply chain in chemical processes in-
volves the effective flow of materials and analyzes the distribution
of raw materials to product at various stages to achieve scalable
economic benefits. Value chain is based on the customer value and
involves activities that add value to a product or service. Awudu
and Zhang (2012) showed that the uncertainties and sustainabil-
ity influenced the performance of the biofuel supply chain. The
major uncertainty factors included (1) raw material supply, (2)
process yield of three different production methods, and (3)
product price. Vennestrøm et al. (2011) indicated that the conver-
sion of biomass could be discussed using two strategies of value
chain analysis. One is the drop-in strategy, which describes the
intermediates obtained from the chemical platform and the prod-
uct in an advanced market. The other is an emerging strategy which
represents the new value chain, which finally provides a novel
product. Additionally, the final product does not compete with
existing products directly, so it can exploit the biomass feedstock
and maximize the production benefits. Yue et al. (2014) analyzed
the modeling and optimization of biomass-to-bioenergy supply
chains and highlighted the few key components of supply chains
such as feedstock supply and logistics, biomass conversion in
advanced bio-refineries, and fuel distribution and end-use systems.
De Jong et al. (2015) combined the value chain with techno-
economic analysis (TEA) for renewable jet fuel production and
2
Journal of Cleaner Production 289 (2021) 125778
showed the minimum fuel selling price (MFSP) of six conversion
pathways. They also highlighted that the co-production strategies
reduced the MFSP by 4e8%. In addition, Reimer and Zheng (2017)
performed an economic analysis of the bio-aviation energy sup-
ply chain and showed that combined the energy policy would reach
the feasibility. The proposed strategies involve a 17% subsidy on
alternative fuel, 20% tax on petro-fuel or 9% alternative fuel subsidy,
and 9% tax on the conventional fuel. In the supply chain analysis,
there are few factors that affect the overall economic benefits, so
some studies suggested the use of Monte Carlo (MC) simulations to
predict the uncertainties in economic performance (Batan et al.,
2016; Chu et al., 2017).
The feedstock chosen for this study was used cooking oil
(UCO), mostly obtained from fried vegetable oils and fats. Based
on a previous investigation, approximately 12,000 ton of UCO is
recycled legally in Taiwan. However, compared with the demand,
a large amount of UCO still remains from being recycled. There-
fore, UCO recycle has considerable potential. According to
government-issued waste disposal methods, UCO is employed in
feed mills, soap processing plants, and stearic acid and biodiesel
chemical plants which need different requirements of quality. The
uncertain issue on the quality of recycled UCO also brings uncer-
tain prices and output performance which needs probabilistic
description with simulation method to verify the results.
Enweremadu and Mbarawa (2009) highlighted some conversion
methods for UCO treatment, which the main product biodiesel
was tested using different diesel engines. With the development
of new technologies, hydrocracking has become a promising
method for biofuel conversion. By adjusting the reaction tem-
perature, pressure, liquid hourly space velocity, and time, oxygen
can be removed and UCO can be converted to valuable products
(Bezergianni and Kalogianni, 2009). In addition, a project orga-
nized by five European countries called the BIO4A was launched in
2018, the target of which was to scale-up HEFA production from
UCO and attain sustainable and environmentally stable perfor-
mance of the whole supply chain by 2022 (Bio4A project, 2018).
The comparison between our work and past research progress can
be found in Table 1.
In Table 1, we can see few studies had compared the results of
the one-stage, two-stage and three-stage process, and for the value
chain analysis, most of the researches focused on deterministic
financial analysis. Even the researches discussed the uncertainty,
only a few of them analyzed the sensitivity and minimum fuel
selling price (MFSP). Obviously, the scale of production capacity and
uncertainty, which are important for economic value analysis, were
rarely discussed in the past, so this study combines these impor-
tance to analysis the value chain of UCO.
Some TEA studies on HRJ fuel production have been performed
previously. However, different conversion processes would result in
various yields of product/co-product, and the product diversity
would affect the cost evaluation of the process. This remains to be
the research gap for studying the process evaluation of HRJ pro-
duction. In this study, we compare three processes (one-, two- and
three-step) with different product/co-products (One-, two- and
three-step process have the products of HRJ, HRD, LPG and light oil,
and three-step process have additional co-products of Glycerin and
Unsaturated FFA. The details can be found in Section 2) to evaluate
their benefits by using the net present value (NPV) and discounted
cash flow method. In addition, in order to make more widely and
reliable application of this research, it is expected that the
comprehensive assessment with MC simulation will help scale up
production and assist in value chain analysis based on the as-
sumptions of the same input and economic conditions through
probabilistic description, to strengthen and compare the economic
value of different technologies.
H.-W. Hsu, Y.-H. Chang and W.-C. Wang Journal of Cleaner Production 289 (2021) 125778

Table 1
The comparison between our work and recent research progress in Value-chain Analysis of UCO.

Past research progress UCO to Jet Production area

one-step two-step three-step Plant Deterministic Uncertainty Monte Carlo Sensitivity Minimum fuel
process process process capacities financial (MC) simulation analysis selling price (MFSP)
analysis

Bezergianni and Kalogianni (2009) ✓ ✓

Enweremadu and Mbarawa (2009) ✓ ✓ ✓
Verma et al. (2011) ✓ ✓
Vennestrøm et al. (2011) ✓
Awudu and Zhang (2012) ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
Yue et al. (2014) ✓
De Jong et al. (2015) ✓ ✓ ✓
Batan et al. (2016). ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
Chu et al. (2017) ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
Reimer and Zheng (2017) ✓

Our work ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓

2. Methods three processes with various catalyst applied.

2.1. Process description 2.1.1. Three-step process description

The feedstock used in this study was used cooking oil (UCO)
comprising myristic acid (C14:0), palmitic acid (C16:0), stearic acid
(C18:0), oleic acid (C18:1), and linoleic acid (C18:2) (Bautista et al.,
2009). Mostly, UCO is produced from edible oil, which is pure
vegetable oil or blended with small amounts of animal oil. The oil
mixture makes the refinery process difficult because it contains
numerous triglycerides. Fig. 1 illustrates the scheme of feed-
reaction-products for the three conversion routes. Three sug-
gested processes were simulated in this study to identify the re-
action that produced the target fuel and with different byproducts.
As seen in Fig. 1, the types of the product resulting from the three
routes are similar. The hydro-processing reaction appears in the
The three-step process is illustrated in Fig. 2 and the design
parameters are listed in Table 2. The liquid phase feedstock and
water were simultaneously pumped to 55 bar. After adjusting the
reaction temperature to 270
C, the first step was conducted. Hy-
drolysis was the first reaction of the three-step process, which in-
volves decomposition of the substances by water. As shown in
Fig. 3, water reacts with 1 mol triglyceride (TG), which is then
converted to diglycerides (DGs) and 1 mol of fatty acids. In the next
hydrolysis reaction, DG is converted to monoglycerides (MGs).
Finally, in the last hydrolysis step, 1 mol of glycerin and fatty acids
are produced from MG. The conversion of oil via hydrolysis has
been published previously (Holliday et al., 1997; King et al., 1999;
Pinto and Lanças, 2006; Vasquez et al., 2017), and the average

Fig. 1. The scheme of feed-reaction-products for the three conversion routes.

3
H.-W. Hsu, Y.-H. Chang and W.-C. Wang Journal of Cleaner Production 289 (2021) 125778

Fig. 2. A simplified schematic diagram of the three-step process.

Table 2
Design parameters of the three-step process.

1st step 2nd step 3rd step

Feedstock UCO FFA Straight-chain alkanes

Reaction temperature (
C) 270 380 360
Reaction pressure (bar) 55 50 60
Carrier gas None H2 H2
Water-to-oil volume ratio/ 4 (Water-to-oil ratio) 500 (H2-to-FFA volume ratio) 13.6 (H2-to-alkane molar ratio)
H2-to-feed volume (molar) ratio
Conversion (%) 99.7 99.2 75
Product FFA Straight-chain alkanes C8 to C16 hydrocarbons
By-product Glycerin LPG, CO, CO2, water C5eC7 and C17eC20 hydrocarbons
Catalyst None NiMo/g-Al2O3 NiAg/SAPO-11
WHSV (h¡1) None 2 2

Fig. 3. Chemical structural formulas of the hydrolysis reaction (Holliday et al., 1997; King et al., 1999; Pinto and Lanças, 2006; Vasquez et al., 2017; Wang et al., 2012b, 2013).
[Note: R: (CH2)16CH3; R1: (CH2)7CH ¼ CH(CH2)7CH3; R2: (CH2)7CH ¼ CH(CH2)CH]CH(CH2)4CH3].

4
H.-W. Hsu, Y.-H. Chang and W.-C. Wang
conversion yield was found to be higher than 97% under a tem-
perature range of 260e280
C (Holliday et al., 1997). Furthermore,
water had to react in subcritical conditions. The products from the
first step were divided into two flowsdone was the mixture of
water and glycerin, and the other contained free fatty acids (FFAs),
which would enter the next upgrading process. Water and glycerin
could be separated easily using multi-effect distillation using
different boiling points and reverse osmosis (Ardi et al., 2015; Mah
et al., 2014). Subsequently, the crude glycerin can be collected and
further refined into products, and the wastewater part needs to be
sent through the wastewater treatment equipment. FFAs were
separated to saturated and unsaturated FFAs. Unsaturated FFAs
could be separated using various methods; for example, the oldest
and simplest method involves cooling the mixture slowly, crystal-
lizing the mixture, and then, pressing the crystallites into different
designed presses (Haraldsson, 1984). The saturated FFA has been
reported to be a risk factor for Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease
(NAFLD) (Haraldsson, 1984). Therefore, compared with saturated
FFA, unsaturated FFA contains at least one double bond in the
component chain and is considered a healthy fat. Thus, it can be
used as an edible oil additive. The saturated FFAs were converted
into straight chain alkanes in the hydro-processing reactor with
adding hydrogen. The products after hydro-processing were split
into liquid and gas products. The liquid products contain alkanes,
water and FFA residue. After separation, water was sent to the
waste water treatment and the FFA residue was recycled. The
gaseous products contain methane, ethane, propane, CO2 and CO. In
a previous study, excellent selectivity was obtained using NiMo/g-
Al2O3 catalyst under sufficient hydrogen flow conditions (Wang
and Hsieh, 2020). The hydro-processed alkanes were further fed
to hydro-isomerization/cracking reactor with adding hydrogen.
During high temperature and high pressure reactions, the straight
chain alkanes were cracked and isomerized into small and
branched species. The alkane products include C5 to C22 hydrocar-
bons; after distillation, three types of hydrocarbon fuels were
separated, C5eC7 hydrocarbons could be observed as a light oil,
C8eC16 hydrocarbons were similar to jet fuel, and C17eC20 hydro-
carbons were considered to be diesel; the last two products are
called HRJ and HRD, respectively (Hilbers et al., 2015). In the
separator, the gas phase products from hydro-processing and
hydro-isomerization/cracking were collected together and marked
as exhaust gas (H2, CO, and CO2) and combustible gas, which was
assumed to be liquid petroleum gas (LPG) in this study.
2.1.2. Two-step process description
The general schematic diagram of the two-step process is
demonstrated in Fig. 4 and the design parameters are listed in
Table 3 (Hsu et al., 2018; Lin et al., 2020). In the process, UCO pre-
heating was performed to ensure the oil pumpability and UCO
pressure was increased using a centrifugal pump. At a high tem-
perature and high pressure, liquid was pumped into the reactor to
react with hydrogen over the NiMo/g-Al2O3 catalyst. During pro-
cess simulation, a stoichiometric reactor was chosen, and the re-
actions are illustrated in Fig. 5, which shows the chemical structure
of the hydro-converted reaction and shows that adding hydrogen
can deoxidize fatty acids in different forms. Hydrodeoxygenation
(HDO), decarbonylation (DCO), and decarboxylation (DCO2)
occurred, thus forming water, carbon monoxide, and carbon diox-
ide, respectively (Ameen et al., 2019). Water was the by-product of
HDO and could be further recycled and used as cooling water for
the condenser. Other emitted gases were collected and passed to
the next gas separator. The liquid product was allowed to flow to
the next hydrocracking/isomerization reactor, which could break
the component chain and produce more isomers over the catalyst
of NiAg/SAPO-11. Next, a condenser was used to separate the hot
5
Journal of Cleaner Production 289 (2021) 125778
liquid product into two phasesdthe gas phase, which passed
through to the gas pipe, and the liquid part, which underwent the
next process, distillation. Only a few parts of the gas were useful
and could be used as flammable gas, which is shown as LPG in
Fig. 4. The distillation column separated the hydrocarbons into
three different liquid products classified based on the lengths of
their carbon chains as follows: C5eC7 are light oil, C8eC16 are jet
fuel, and C17eC20 are diesel.
2.1.3. One-step process description
Previous studies have shown that HRJ can be produced with a
high mass yield using a one-step process. The one-step process is
an optimized version of the two-step process, but the choice of
catalyst is different. Hydro-conversion is performed using the
principle as that shown in Fig. 5 and the design parameters are
listed in Table 4. Lin and Wang (2020) reported a direct one-step
conversion of glyceride-based oil into HRJ over NiAg/SAPO-11
catalyst. With the reaction conditions listed in Table 4, the prod-
uct with the conversion of 100%, selectivity of 84%, yield of 72% and
I-to-N (isomer-to-normal alkane) ratio of 2.1 can be obtained. In
addition, other researchers also presents different process condi-
tions and results. Bezergianni et al. (2009) compared fresh and used
cooking oils using different reaction parameter. The results showed
that the selectivity of kerosene (%) and jet fuel (%) was good to at a
low temperature (350
C). Furthermore, by adjusting the amount of
catalyst, Verma et al. (2011) indicated that jet fuel could be pro-
duced by the one-step process with a yield of 77%. As presented in
Fig. 6, the process begins as the feedstock being heated and pum-
ped to attain high temperature and pressure. Then, the reaction is
performed in a fixed bed reactor with hydrogen over the NiAg/
SAPO-11 catalyst. Furthermore, the liquid product was cooled,
and then, the separator separated the gas phase from the liquid
phase. Next, a distillation column was set to separate the jet fuel
and light oil with a reflux ratio of 0.1 and 20 stages. Previous
research has shown that the one-step HRJ process can achieve a
high mass yield. Thus, if the target product is jet fuel, the one-step
process is a good choice. However, the most common process for
commercial production is the two-step process because the dis-
tribution of the product is more diverse and stable.
2.2. Economic analysis
Economic analysis was performed using the net present value
(NPV) and discounted cash flow method, which were calculated
using the discounted cash flow rate of return model. The parame-
ters used in this study were obtained from local scenarios. To
analyze cash flow, the sum of depreciation charge was scheduled
over 8 years and profit after tax had a 30-year facility life. Initially,
the deterministic values were input for analysis to imitate the
economic circumstances of scaled-up production, and some un-
certain data parameters were considered. B/C denotes the benefit
to cost ratio, which is the ratio of the present value of the benefit
flow to the present value of the cost flow in a project, and it is an
evaluation indicator for economic analysis. When the value of B/C
becomes more than 1, it denotes that the income is higher than the
cost and that the scheme is feasible.
2.2.1. Operating expenditure
Operating costs can be categorized into fixed operating costs
and variable operating costs. The former mainly involves the cost of
raw materials and those related to the processes aforementioned.
The price and amount of UCO are confidential information, so it is
difficult to obtain the actual data. In addition to quality, there are
many factors that affect and change the UCO prices. Thus, the UCO
price charged by the local waste collector was used and was
H.-W. Hsu, Y.-H. Chang and W.-C. Wang Journal of Cleaner Production 289 (2021) 125778

Fig. 4. A simplified schematic diagram of the two-step process.

Table 3
Design parameters of the two-step process.

1st step (Hsu et al., 2018) 2nd step (Lin et al., 2020)

Feedstock UCO Straight-chain alkanes

Reaction temperature (
C) 400 360
Reaction pressure (bar) 38 60
Carrier gas H2 H2
H2-to-feed volume (molar) ratio 1000 (H2-to-oil volume ratio) 13.6 (H2-to-alkane molar ratio)
Conversion (%) 85.4 75
Product Straight-chain alkanes C8 to C16 hydrocarbons
By-product LPG, CO, CO2, water C5eC7 and C17eC20 hydrocarbons
Catalyst NiMo/g-Al2O3 NiAg/SAPO-11
WHSV (h1) 3 2

compared with the data of a credible business report, which pro-
vides the UCO cif ARA price. There is a positive correlation between
the domestic vendors’ selling price, the purchase price of local
vendors, and the cif ARA price of the Netherlands (Argus Biofuels,
2019). The labor cost was calculated by manning estimates
(Apostolakou et al., 2009). We used the manpower allocation of a
local renewable energy factory as a reference. The salary was the
minimum wage announced by the government.
2.2.2. Total capital expenditure
The technical and economic assumptions used in the model are
provided as equations in Table 5. TCI is the total capital investment;
and FCI is the fixed capital investment, which is calculated from
direct cost and indirect cost shown in Equation (2). WC is working
capital, which is assumed to be 15% of the FCI for a chemical plant
and was used in this study (Peters et al., 1968). The direct cost refers
to the costs related to the production such as equipment purchase,
installation, piping, electricity, and land. The indirect costs include
costs that are not directly related to production, such as engineer-
ing and supervision, constriction expenses, the contractor’s fee, and
contingency costs. Both the costs were obtained from previous
studies and are shown in Table 5. The income tax rate used was
based on government regulation (20% as income exceeds 200,000
(Taiwan currency)). The construction period was taken from a
previous study (Zhang et al., 2013); the three year assumption was
32%, 60%, and 8% sequentially, and the start-up time was half a year
for preparations. The equipment cost was obtained from the cur-
rent price of the manufacturer using Equation (3) and (4) to adjust
6
the appropriate cost, which was assumed based on 2018 factors
provided by the Plant Cost Index from Chemical Engineering
Magazine (Garrett, 2012).
2.3. Price of products and revenues
This study mainly focuses on the application of hydro-
conversion technology. The main product is HRJ, and the remain-
ing hydrocarbon products will be separated into other byproducts
during the production process. Byproducts are divided into LPG,
light oil, and HRD, based on their properties and components. The
selling prices of fuel products were obtained from a local petro-
chemical company using 10 year data as references (Corporation,
2019). All product prices are generalized in Table 7 for triangular
distribution. Other products such as glycerin and unsaturated fatty
acids were based on the selling prices of local suppliers. Glycerol is
assumed to be an industrial grade product that can be directly
obtained from the process without further purification steps, but it
has a relatively lower price. Unsaturated fatty acids are sold as food
additives. Therefore, their prices and quality should be food grade,
but a higher cost must be invested for quality control.
2.3.1. Uncertainty analysis and sensitivity analysis in the supply
chain
Generally, the supply chain is defined using suppliers, manu-
facturers, and consumers (Awudu and Zhang, 2012). In this study,
we defined the supply chain using the raw material, the process,
and the product and performed uncertainty analysis. Uncertainties
H.-W. Hsu, Y.-H. Chang and W.-C. Wang Journal of Cleaner Production 289 (2021) 125778

Fig. 5. Chemical structural formulas of the hydro-conversion reaction (Chen and Wang, 2019; Lin et al., 2020; Wang and Hsieh, 2020).
[Note: R: (CH2)16CH3; R1: (CH2)7CH ¼ CH(CH2)7CH3; R2: (CH2)7CH ¼ CH(CH2)CH]CH(CH2)4CH3 ].

Table 4 3. Results and discussion

Design parameters of the one-step process (Lin and Wang, 2020).

Parameter 3.1. Energy, mass, and carbon balances

Feedstock UCO
Reaction temperature (
C) 410 Mass balance and energy balance form the foundation of the
Reaction pressure (bar) 52 industrial processes in chemical plants. The process parameters
Carrier gas H2 were based on previous experimental data from the laboratory and
H2-to-feed volume ratio 1000
scaled-up software simulations. The mass flow rate values are key
Conversion (%) 100
Product C8 to C16 hydrocarbons
aspects of economic evaluation. The results of these values were
By-product LPG, CO, CO2,water; obtained from the Aspen Plus™ process simulation software under
C5eC7 and C17eC20 hydrocarbons the ideal conditions, reported in Table 6. As mass balance input is
Catalyst NiAg/SAPO-11 equal to the output, the products obtained in the process were
WHSV (h1) 1
effectively converted. In terms of energy balance, the output was
less than the input, especially for the two-step and three-step
processes. Thus, a small part of the energy was dissipated in the
are assumptions in which the variation of the data itself is esti- process. Because the products of these three processes are mostly
mated based on historical data. Uncertainty was analyzed using MC hydrocarbons, carbon balance was used to verify the carbon
simulation in the Crystal Ball software (Corporation,) to predict the transfer during the process. The calculation of carbon balance was
impact of changes in the input of the supply chain on overall performed using the molecular weight of each component and the
returns under the random sampling method to estimate the mass flow rate. The carbon balance was confirmed by the total
probability of random events. The entire production was divided number of carbon moles input and output.
into three parts: front, middle, and back parts. The former section
considers the amount and price of raw materials such as UCO price, 3.2. Economic evaluations
hydrogen price, catalyst price, and energy consumption cost; the
middle section is the impact of the three process yields; and the 3.2.1. Deterministic economic analysis
back section is the price of the main product and the byproducts. The deterministic method was used to check the financial
According to the prediction results of MC simulation, the best viability of the three processes. The mean values for all variables in
random distribution can be obtained and input to the economic the model were used as listed in Table 7. The minimum internal rate
model for analysis. Sensitivity analysis was used to simulate data of return (IRR) of the (NPV) was fixed at 10% in three scenarios.
variability to obtain different results to verify the accuracy of the Because of the subtle difference in the number of UCO legal dec-
data and test how the uncertainty of each element of the project larations announced by the local government, we referred to the
affects the target. previous case and assumed that operations were performed on a
7
H.-W. Hsu, Y.-H. Chang and W.-C. Wang
Fig. 6. A simplified schematic diagram of the one-step process.
Table 5
Primary equations used for the financial model.
Equations
TCI ¼ FCI þ WC
FCI ¼ TDC þ TIDC
index factor 1
Present cost ¼ Original cost ð Þ
index factor 2
capacity of equip:a n
Cost of equip:a ¼ cost of equip:bð Þ
capacity of equip:b
CFt
NPV ¼ S  Co
ð1 þ rÞt
B C ¼ discounted benefits
= discounted benefit: Total annual revenue, discounted costs:
discounted costs
mass production scale. The lower bar of the capacity was close to
the number reported by the government agencies, and the upper
bar was the maximum amount that can be processed. The prices of
fuel, including jet fuel, diesel, LPG, light oil, and gas, were estimated
by the damped trend smoothing non-seasonal method in the
Crystal Ball software in compliance with the investigated data. The
data of other prices were computed using statistical methods
because the conditions to use the trend forecasting analysis were
not met. Because they were not the main products, after analysis
and comparison, different methods of calculating the selling price
would not affect the economic benefit, which is explained in the
sensitivity analysis in Section 3.2.3.
Table 8 shows the results of financial analysis of the three
processes. In deterministic analysis, economic analysis was per-
formed for each condition using the mean values. From the
perspective of economic analysis, the economic scale of produc-
tion affects output efficiency, and the results can to help industry
and government decision-makers as a reference when developing
used oil recycling policies. Therefore, in this study, we pay special
attention to the comparison of plant capacities. Assuming plant
capacities of 100, 300, and 600 ton per day, when the processing
capacity violates 100 ton a day, the part of operating costs can be
observed. The processing volume was considered for 100, 300,
and 600 day production. When the processing volume violated
the 100 ton a day assumption, the operating costs of the two-step
and three-step processes became similar. However, in terms of
revenue, because the three-step process generated more products
with a high value, the revenue for the three-step process was
Journal of Cleaner Production 289 (2021) 125778
Description No.
TCI: total capital investment; FCI: the fixed capital (1)
investment; WC is working capital, which is assumed to be
15% of FCI
TDC: Total direct cost; TIDC: Total indirect cost (2)
The index factors are from CEPCI chemical engineering cost (3)
index (CEPCI, 2018).
n: Exponent for different equipment and capacity (Peters (4)
et al., 1968).
CFt : net cash flow at time t; r: discounted rate; t: period (5)
number; Co: initial investment cost
(6)
Total capital cost, depreciation charge and working capital.
higher than those of the other two processes. After financial cal-
culations, the one-step process showed the highest NPV (35.23),
followed by the three-step process whose NPV was 26.11. Because
of the output yield, the estimated NPV of the two-step process was
negative, which means that it is not suitable for investment in this
case. Increasing the plant capacity to 300 ton a day obviously
increased all costs and revenues, and the NPV of the three-step
process became almost close to that of the one-step process. The
NPV of the two-step process also changed from negative to posi-
tive, but the economic value was still less than that of the one-step
for a capacity of 100 ton per day. When the plant capacity was
double to 600 ton per day, only slight differences were observed.
As the scale increases, the values will inevitably increase, but the
B/C ratio of the one-step process decreased by 0.01, probably
because of some calculation problems using Equations (5) and (6),
which are based on the annual cash flow calculated for 30 years
and on the average value over 30 years, respectively. The results of
the overall economic performance also showed that the one-step
process performed better than the three-step process, which
performed better than the two-step process. It is assumed to be an
ideal average value, and other risks and uncertainties are not
considered. The results of the NPV and B/C ratio are promising,
which shows that the processes are acceptable and the economic
benefits of scaling up the processes are different.
The financial deterministic analysis of our study showed that
the one-step process is the most profitable with a B/C ratio of
~1.20. At a per day capacity of 100 ton, the system can rarely
provide economic benefits. Although the B/C ratio of the two-step
8
H.-W. Hsu, Y.-H. Chang and W.-C. Wang Journal of Cleaner Production 289 (2021) 125778

Table 6
Mass, energy and carbon balance of three process. (a) 1-step conversion process (b) 2-step conversion process (3) 3-step conversion process.

(a)

Input Mass Energy Carbon Output Mass Energy Carbon

(kg/hr) (MJ) (kmol/hr) (kg/hr) (MJ) (kmol/hr)

UCO 25000 303.94 1.60 HRJ 16703 207.18 1.78

H2 350 11.76 HRD 3467 42.12 0.19
Q-heat 10.01 LPG 3541.40 46.00 0.23
Q-cool 12.71 Light oil 1336.94 14.79 0.06
Work 1.29 Gas 301.67 1.19 0
Sum 25350 311.70 1.60 Sum 25350 311.28 1.66

(b)
Input Mass Energy Carbon Output Mass Energy Carbon
(kg/hr) (MJ) (kmol/hr) (kg/hr) (MJ) (kmol/hr)

UCO 25000 303.94 1.60 HRJ 14210.40 176.27 1.00

H2 990.58 33.27 HRD 1917.70 23.30 0.14
Q-heat 18.79 LPG 4243.26 54.80 0.28
Q-cool 38.27 Light oil 2303.73 28.23 0.16
Work 5.33 Gas 1358.41 2.08 0.02
water 1957.06 8.45 0
Sum 25990.58 312.40 1.60 Sum 25990.58 293.13 1.60

(c)
Input Mass Energy Carbon Output Mass Energy Carbon
(kg/hr) (MJ) (kmol/hr) (kg/hr) (MJ) (kmol/hr)

UCO 25000 303.94 1.60 HRJ 7358.12 91.27 0.50

H2 668 22.44 HRD 960.48 11.67 0.07
water 1680 7.40 LPG 1517.37 19.60 0.10
Q-heat 15.31 Light oil 902.92 11.06 0.06
Q-cool 22.48 Gas 234.47 0.77 0.02
work 7.51 Water 1787.91 7.84 0
glycerin 2630.99 11.79 0.09
Unsaturated FFA 11955.74 127.54 0.74
Sum 27348 299.09 1.60 Sum 27348 281.54 1.60

Table 7
The triangular distribution parameters of three production facilities for uncertainty analysis.

Parameters e Mean value þ

Front UCO price 0.46 0.62 0.76

UCO quantity (thousand metric ton/day) 100 300 600
Catalyst ($/kg) 235.57 276.67 489.08
Hydrogen ($/kg) 1.30 2.03 2.87
Water (kL) 0.36 0.37 0.37
Electricity (kwh) 0.08 0.09 0.10
Gas 0.18 0.34 0.51
Middle One-step 50% 67% 80%
Two-step 40% 55% 70%
Three-step 20% 30% 35%
Back Jet fuel ($/L) 0.22 0.60 0.97
Diesel 0.76 0.86 0.96
LPG 0.44 0.79 1.15
Light oil 1.10 1.26 1.42
Glycerol 0.60 0.80 0.98
Unsaturated FFA 0.90 0.96 1.00

process was 1, the NPV was negative in the case of 30 year oper-
ation. By scaling up the plant capacity to 300 ton a day, the data for
the one-step and three-step processes were considerably close,
and their NPVs were 92.01 and 91.87 million, respectively. This
scenario agrees with the processes most countries follow. The 100
ton per day scenario is similar to the local situation in Taiwan. If an
efficient UCO recovery system can be effectively established, it
could reach a capacity of 300 ton. When the process is scaled up to
600 ton a day, the overall economic benefits can reach a certain
level, and the B/C values of the one-step, two-step, and three-step
processes were 1.20, 1.12, and 1.16, respectively.
3.2.2. Uncertainty analysis
Based on the results of the deterministic financial analysis, we
listed several impact factors and performed an uncertainty analysis
to identify the aspects that affect the NPV. MC simulations were
performed under the conditions listed in Table 8, and the results
were generated by simulating 10,000 data points. Table 9 and Fig. 7
show the probability that NPV >0 was obtained by the three pro-
cesses based on the uncertainty analysis under different plant ca-
pacity scenarios. The percentages in Table 9 show the probabilities
of making a profit, and Fig. 7 presents the statistics of each calcu-
lation. The blue area on the left of the zero-NPV threshold is the

9
H.-W. Hsu, Y.-H. Chang and W.-C. Wang Journal of Cleaner Production 289 (2021) 125778

Table 8
Deterministic financial analysis of the three processes for plant capacities of 100, 300, and 600 ton per day.

(a) 100 ton/day

1-step 2-step 3-step

Operating Cost (Million) 23.78 26.36 26.39

Revenue 29.04 26.97 30.64
Equipment Cost 1.33 2.25 2.69
TCI 5.38 8.51 10.20
NPV (Million) 35.23 1.98 26.11
B/C 1.21 1.00 1.14

(b) 300 ton/day

1-step 2-step 3-step

Operating Cost (Million) 75.48 77.23 77.76

Revenue 89.23 81.52 91.86
Equipment Cost 3.23 4.27 4.55
TCI 12.40 16.18 17.24
NPV (Million) 92.01 19.54 91.87
B/C 1.17 1.04 1.17

(c) 600 ton/day

1-step 2-step 3-step

Operating Cost (Million) 146.33 155.26 159.06

Revenue 176.69 175.99 186.34
Equipment Cost 4.83 6.07 6.50
TCI 18.27 22.99 24.61
NPV (Million) 209.38 134.24 184.55
B/C 1.20 1.12 1.16

probability that the NPV is greater than zero. For the one-step
process, the profit rates of the three plant capacity scales (100,
300, and 600 ton/day) were 79.1%, 75.79%, and 77.41%, respectively.
A comparison of the results in Table 9 shows that the larger the
scale, the higher the NPV, and the probability of the profit will not
increase accordingly. However, the differences in the profitability of
the three plant capacities are not obvious, and the average profit
probability is approximately 77.43%, which indicates that the one-
step process can reach a certain level of profitability under
different capacities. The results of the uncertainty analysis of the
two-step process show that when the scale is small, the profit
probability is low. The results of the deterministic analysis showed
that the NPV is negative for the capacity of 100 ton/day. As the plant
capacity increases, the numbers of cost and benefits increase.
Although the profitability of this situation increases, the risk is
relatively low. The overall profitability of the two-step process was
found to be approximately 60%, which is the lowest compared to
those of the other scenarios. Finally, the three-step process was
found to perform well in both the deterministic and uncertainty
analyses. It can be seen from the table that the NPVs of the three-
step and one-step processes were not very different, but after the
uncertainty analysis, the profitability of the three-step process
greater than that of the one-step process by approximately 10e15%.
Therefore, it can be reasonably shows that three-step process has a
high probability of profit and low investment risk. The overall
performance was 89.37%, which shows that the three-step process
is the best choice of the three processes.
The MC simulation was used to conduct uncertainty analysis,
Table 9
Certainties for NPV>0 obtained by financial analysis of the three processes under
different plant capacities.
1-step 2-step
Plant capacity 100 ton/day 79.10% 49.41%
Plant capacity 300 ton/day 75.79% 57.63%
Plant capacity 600 ton/day 77.41% 72.41%
The probability of occurrence in 3 processes 77.43% 59.82%
and the uncertainty of the three-step process was found to be
10.63%, which is the highest probability of profit, followed by the
one-step process, the value of which is 22.57%. The profit proba-
bility of the two-step process is the lowest (~60% on an average).
The results of the uncertainty analysis show that increasing plant
capacities can provide high profits and lower risks.
3.2.3. Sensitivity analysis
After the determination and uncertainty analysis, the final
verification was performed by sensitivity analysis. Sensitivity
analysis can identify sensitive factors that have a significant impact
on the economic benefits of investment projects from many un-
certain factors and can analyze the impact of the calculation on the
NPV. The results are illustrated in the tornado chart in Fig. 8. The
process was simulated under 16 conditions considering three
supply chain parts, as shown in Table 2. In nine scenarios, for the
one-step and two-step processes, jet fuel price, denoted by the red
bar, is the main factor affecting total revenue, which is 82% and 75%,
respectively, for the one-step and two-step processes. The next
most influencing factors was the UCO price which contributed to
15% and 19% variance in the one-step and two-step processes. The
third impact factor was LPG, which accounted for ~2e3% in the
three processes. The other factors such as the price of hydrogen gas,
catalyst, diesel, natural gas, and water all had an effect of less than
1%, and their impacts on NPV were relativity low. Next, we pre-
dicted the jet fuel price for this result. For the three-step process,
the results show that the contribution to variance of raw materials
and products was comparable. In a previous study, the main
product (fuel) and feedstock (UCO) accounted for more than 40%
(Chu et al., 2017). However, the impact of feedstock prices in this
study was greater than that of jet fuel, which may be caused by
different processes and yields. The larger the capacity scale, the
higher the impact of the UCO price, and the trend of impact of the
3-step three-step process was obvious.
87.37%
90.53% 3.3. Minimum selling price of jet fuel
90.21%
89.37%
The result of sensitivity analysis showed that the jet fuel oil price
10
H.-W. Hsu, Y.-H. Chang and W.-C. Wang Journal of Cleaner Production 289 (2021) 125778

Fig. 7. NPV probability distributions for the one-step, two-step, and three-step processes with different per day plant capacities. The area on the right of the zero-NPV threshold in
blue color is the probability that the NPV >0. (For interpretation of the references to color in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the Web version of this article.)

Fig. 8. Sensitivity analysis for the one-step, two-step, and three-step processes with different per day plant capacities.

is the largest influencing factor for the one-step and two-step
processes. Thus, we referred to the method in the literature. The
minimum selling price of jet fuel (MJSP) was evaluated using a TEA
model (Li et al., 2018; Wang, 2016, 2019) with break-even condi-
tions. The general parameter assumptions were the same as those
of the previous financial analysis model, and the IRR was fixed at
10% in each evaluating model. The plant capacity assumed was 300
ton per day. The MJSP results for the three processes are shown in
Table 10, which were found to be $0.47, $0.56, and $0.31 per liter,
potential in the market. The MJSP for the two-step process was the
highest and was very close to the current fuel price studies here.
The MJSP for the one-step process was $0.47 per liter, which is
lower by $0.1 per liter than that of the two-step process. The three-
Table 10
MJSP for 300 ton per day plant capacity for the three
processes.

respectively, for the one-step, two-step, and three-step processes. Price ($/L)
The jet fuel price data surveyed in this study were between $0.22 MJSP 0.47
1step 300t
and $0.97 per liter. The minimum selling prices of these three MJSP 2step 300t 0.56
processes were all under this range, which means that they had MJSP 3step 300t 0.31

11
H.-W. Hsu, Y.-H. Chang and W.-C. Wang
step process had the lowest selling price because numerous
byproducts were produced with a high yield. Thus, the products of
the three-step process do not need to be sold at a high price to
achieve a profit. According to the previous studies, the minimum
selling price of aviation fuel can be combined with local policies,
such as the carbon price assessment, to determine the appropriate
price. Bann et al. (2017) quantified plant performance in America
with a Renewable Fuel Standard policy analysis, which indicated
that HEFA as well as fast pyrolysis and hydro-processing (FPH)
could achieve the highest probability of positive NPV under the
existing policy supports. Besides, it was also indicated that if the
two policy instruments (conventional and renewable jet fuels) are
combined, which considers 9% tax on the conventional fuel and 9%
subsidy on bio-jet, the new suggested price of bio-jet is $0.88 per
liter, while the price of the conventional jet fuel is $0.89 per liter
(Reimer and Zheng, 2017).
4. Conclusion
Economic feasibility is essential to the development of emerging
low-carbon technology, but it faces uncertain environments and
risks. Therefore, we incorporate uncertainty and performs a
financial analysis to assess the benefits. The results showed that if
HRJ is the main target product, the one-step process is suitable.
However, considering overall economic benefits, the three-step
process should be selected. An efficient UCO recovery system is
the key for the industrial development due to the higher benefit
with larger plant capacity. Furthermore, three-stage process will
have an average more 11.94% chance of profiting than the one-
stage. From the sensitivity analysis, jet fuel price is the key factor
which contributes 75e82% for one- and two-stage processes, but in
three-stage process, UCO price also becomes an important factor
reached nearly 50% and reduce the risk of a single factor contri-
bution. At the same time, three-stage process had the lowest MJSP
which is only 0.31 $/L compared with other two processes. In
conclusion, three-stage process should be the suitable one for the
industrial development aspect through the value-chain analysis
under uncertainty.
There are still some limits in this research. First, due to the
limited data for the evaluation of emerging technologies, we
transferred the data to be triangular distributions which can be
improved in the future. Second, plant capacity assumes that UCO
recovery system can cover. However, the situations in different
countries should be carefully reconsidered, and the results in this
study are used to help the evaluation of possible industry devel-
opment. In the future, the government should consider environ-
mental policies and levy taxes or subsidies to encourage companies
to choose waste for renewable fuel production.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Hsin-Wei Hsu: Conceptualization, Methodology, Validation,
Investigation, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing,
Data curation, Visualization. Yu-Hsuan Chang: Conceptualization,
Methodology, Writing - original draft, Validation, Investigation,
Data curation, Visualization. Wei-Cheng Wang: Conceptualization,
Methodology, Validation, Investigation, Resources, Data curation,
Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing, Visualization,
Supervision, Project administration, Funding acquisition.
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing
financial interests or personal relationships that could have
appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
12
Journal of Cleaner Production 289 (2021) 125778
Acknowledgement
This project was supported by the Ministry of Science and
Technology, Taiwan, through grant 108-2221-E-006 -220 -MY3.
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