Abstract
Conventional urea production is a centralized and fossilintensive process associated with significant greenhousegas (GHG) emissions and limited flexibility for deep decarbonization. As an alternative, the Integrated COnversion of NItrate and Carbonate steams (ICONIC) project is developing innovative electrochemical urea (eurea), via the co-electroreduction of nitrogen and carbon sources using renewable power. While recent research advances in electrocatalysis have demonstrated promising Faradaic efficiencies (FE) toward urea, the design of electrochemical systems involves inherent tradeoffs between key performance indicators (KPIs) such as current density, cell voltage, and FE. Crucially, the implications of electrolyzerlevel performance on plantlevel economics and environmental impacts remain poorly understood. To address this gap, we integrate process modelling with technoeconomic and lifecycle assessment (TEA-LCA) to evaluate the trade-offs of KPIs from a process systems perspective. Labscale electrolyzer KPIs are transformed into process-level environmental/economic metric, using Pythonbased electrolyzer modelling and Aspen Plus downstream simulations. Fossil urea is used as a benchmark, and production scenarios are evaluated for windpowered operation in the Netherlands and solarpowered operation in Spain. The results identify quantitative performance targets for electrolyzer design and demonstrate that urea recovery in the downstream are decisive bottlenecks. This work reveals the essentials for expanding the system boundary beyond the electrolyzer cell, as to identify R&D prioritization and deployment strategies during early-stage technology development and lays the groundwork for scalable and low-carbon urea production.