Comparative Economic Analysis of Gas-to-Liquid Processes for Optimal Product Selection

Gas-To-Liquid (GTL) products have come into the spotlight for alternative energy carriers as an environmentally benign and highly profitable alternative to petroleum resources. There have been various studies conducted to explore the economic and environmental benefits of individual GTL products, but few researchers have performed a comparative economic assessment, determining which product would make the greatest profit among various GTL products. Furthermore, considering the inherent characteristics of process industries, profits from one product are deeply dependent on the price of its raw material. Thus, it is important to choose an optimal GTL product covering those price variations. In this study, we performed economic analyses for three GTL products used for transportation fuel through process modeling and investigated the profitability according to variations in feedstock cost and product price.