This study estimated the cost of producing HDRD from canola
oil and camelina oil in Western Canada using Pd/C as a catalyst
and supercritical hexane as a solvent. A wide range of production
plant sizes was considered and for both feedstock types, the minimum
cost of production occurred at a plant size of 812 million
L/year (14,000 bbl/day). However, there is little variation in
production cost for plant sizes in the range of 290–1161 million
L/year (5000–20,000 bbl/day). The minimum cost of production
was approximately $1.09/L for HDRD from canola oil and
$0.85/L for HDRD from camelina oil – assuming that camelina meal
can be sold for the same price as canola meal. If camelina meal cannot
be sold, the purchase price of camelina oil would increase,
which results in a minimum cost of production of HDRD from
camelina oil of $1.37/L. At these production costs, only HDRD from
camelina (if camelina meal is sold) is cost competitive with fossil
diesel or biodiesel. However, the superior fuel properties of HDRD
compared to fossil diesel and biodiesel could offset some of the difference
in production cost.
Since this study was based on lab-scale experimental data,
many assumptions were made to translate the HDRD plant size
to a commercial scale, meaning that the results of this study are
only preliminary and could change depending on these assumptions.
Therefore, several additional cases were developed to examine
the sensitivity of HDRD production cost to operating cost,
capital cost, vegetable oil price, solvent price, and solvent recovery.
These cases showed that HDRD production cost is not very sensitive
to capital and operating costs, but is highly sensitive to vegetable
oil price, solvent price, and solvent recovery. Therefore,
companies who wish to produce HDRD should consider long-term,
fixed price vegetable oil supply contracts to minimize fluctuations
in HDRD production cost. Further research could also be conducted
to optimize solvent type, flow rate, and recovery.
With further research, HDRD from canola or camelina has potential
to be economically competitive with fossil diesel. HDRD
from camelina is especially promising, since camelina is not used
for human food production and could have significantly lower production
costs than canola. However, currently, production costs for
camelina can only be lower than canola if camelina meal can be
sold as a co-product. Therefore, unless future trials for camelina
meal as animal feed become successful, canola appears to be a better
option for HDRD production from an economic perspective.