Biogas Could Enable Cost-Effective Defossilization of n‑Propanol and Its Derivatives

Defossilization routes for chemicals often entail a large economic premium, hampering their potential adoption. Using techno-economic analysis and life cycle assessment, we show that biogas-based routes for n-propanol synthesis could be economically, in addition to environmentally, appealing. Specifically, we find that the biogas-based propanol route (using biogas, electrolytic hydrogen, and fossil ethylene) could become a win-win alternative, with 30% better economic performance and 70-73% lower climate change impacts than the fossil analog while not entailing any significant burden-shifting. Overall, our results highlight the promising use of biogas as an alternative feedstock in the conventional hydroformylation-hydrogenation process for cost-effective, low-carbon n-propanol production.