Abstract
Sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) is a proven alternative to reduce CO2 emissions in the aviation sector, supporting sustainable growth. However, SAF processes remain economically uncompetitive with fossil-derived jet fuel, prompting interest in strategies to address these challenges. In 2022, Carrasco-Suárez et al. explored process intensification in the SAF separation zone of a biorefinery using waste cooking oil (WCO), achieving a 3.07% reduction in CO2 emissions and lower operational costs for steam and cooling water. Despite these gains, the WCO biorefinery remains economically unviable with high energy demands. This work presents the energy integration of the entire WCO biorefinery addressed from the pinch point methodology, combined with separation zones intensification (EI-PI-S), using the principles of sections movement for distillation columns; these energy efficiency strategies were applied on the biorefinery in Aspen Plus V.10.0 in order to improve the scheme. Key indicators—total annual cost (TAC), energy investment per product energy (EI-P), energy investment per main product mass (EI-MP), and CO2 emissions per main product mass (CO2-MP)—were used to compare the conventional scheme (CS) and the intensified scheme before energy integration (PI-S). The EI-PI-S scheme achieved the best performance, reducing steam and cooling water requirements by 14.34% and 31.06%, respectively, and CO2 emissions by 13.85% and 14.13% compared to CS and PI-S. However, TAC for EI-PI-S was 0.89% higher than PI-S. Despite this, the integrated and intensified WCO biorefinery emerges as a feasible option for SAF production, adhering to energy minimisation principles and improving economic performance.