Integrated simulation and life cycle assessment of CO2 to gasoline conversion: Reactor level optimization and environmental trade offs


Kulbatyrov D. Rastegar S. Kanbetov A. Mottaghitalab V.
2026Walter de Gruyter GmbH

Chemical Product and Process Modeling
2026

The conversion of carbon dioxide (CO2) into gasoline-range hydrocarbons offers a dual benefit of carbon mitigation and the production of synthetic fuels. This work develops an integrated process simulation and life cycle assessment (LCA) framework for CO2-to-gasoline synthesis using Aspen HYSYS, explicitly coupling the Reverse Water Gas Shift (RWGS) and Fischer-Tropsch (FT) pathways. Two RWGS reactor configurations, a Gibbs reactor and a plug-flow reactor (PFR), are modeled and compared based on product yield, energy requirements, and cradle-to-gate environmental performance. The PFR achieves a gasoline output of 314.9kg h-1 from 1,100kg h-1 of CO2, a 4.3-fold increase relative to the Gibbs reactor, but requires 18.4% more cold utility and higher hydrogen input. LCA using ReCiPe 2016 Midpoint (H) v1.13 and a functional unit of 1,000t of CO2 processed shows that this reactor-level efficiency gain is accompanied by 17% higher climate-change impacts (31.8 vs. 27.1 million kg CO2-eq) and a 4.3-fold increase in human toxicity, driven by electricity use and Ni/Co catalyst production. Photochemical ozone formation and fossil resource depletion are also significantly higher in the PFR case. The study demonstrates that optimizing CO2 utilization at the reactor level does not automatically minimize life cycle burdens, and highlights the importance of integrating detailed process simulation with LCA when designing CO2 valorization routes.

ASPEN HYSYS , CO2 utilization , life cycle assessment (LCA) , ReCiPe 2016 , reverse water gas shift (RWGS) , syngas optimization

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Institute of Petrochemical Engineering and Ecology, Atyrau Oil and Gas University N.a. S. Utebayev, Atyrau, Kazakhstan
Department of Chemical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Guilan, Guilan, Rasht, Iran

Institute of Petrochemical Engineering and Ecology
Department of Chemical Engineering

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Книга Публикация научной статьи Волощук 2026 Book Publication of a scientific article 2026