2026 and the Case for Co-location of Biorefineries with Advanced Nuclear

April 1, 2020 | Jim Lane

The Case for Co-location

Carbon-neutral Electricity
- For all of us whose product is sold in an LCFS or RFS-2 market, carbon-free electricity could bring additional value (see B.O.T.E. profitability analysis below). Although most biorefinery processes don’t generally have a substantial base electric demand, co-location might make electric process heat (as opposed to natural gas process heat) more attractive. Further, partnering with the nuclear developer might provide the opportunity for negotiating wholesale REC pricing. It also gives boasting rights for not contributing to distribution line losses (either viewed as system inefficiencies or wasted electricity).
Carbon-neutral, Low-cost Heat
- Nuclear power plants are in essence heat plants that commonly generate electricity using Rankine steam cycles. These steam cycles are designed to optimally reduce enthalpy of the heated steam fed into the turbine. This produces byproduct low-grade heat in the form of low-quality steam or condensate. If you have a biochemical process that requires a steady supply of low-temperature heat, this waste heat might have value to you. Otherwise, the waste heat might be of little use.

Alternatively, many nuclear facilities throughout history (described in greater detail below), have designed facilities to use heat and steam (in the case of LWR’s) for multiple applications (such as desalination, in addition to electricity generation). The impact of a biorefinery on a planned power generation facility will vary depending on the biorefinery base heat demand as compared with the scale of the reactor. If your process would only require 1% of the high-quality steam generated, this would just cause the turbine to operate nominally lower on the generation curve. However, if your facility required 15% of the high-quality steam generated, this might mean a different turbine (whose generation curve peak is at 85% of that the currently planned turbine) would need to be selected.

Regardless, it would likely be important to develop relationships earlier to make use of this opportunity. Once designs are finalized and facilities are built, it might be difficult to convince an owner or utility to retrofit the system with your heat-sink facility and introduce technical risk.

If able to secure high-quality steam, this carbon-free heat could in theory also be used to dry wet feedstocks. Many facilities are simply not viable because of feedstock drying latent heat requirements, paid in the form of process efficiencies, product yields, or natural gas requirements. Co-location with remotely sited nuclear facilities (otherwise with little potential for district heating) means heat could possibly be competitively procured.

Attractive Siting
- Nuclear facilities are usually sited in locations away from NIMBY populations. They are also usually placed on parcels with good utility and transport access, and are industrially zoned. In many parts of the world, these parcels are surrounded by buildable land.

GW-scale facilities bring hundreds of full-time permanent jobs. If located in a rural area, this could bring stability and thousands of people to the nearby town (when considering the families and retail and service workers.

Carbon-neutral, Low-cost Hydrogen
- A number of the newer reactor designs (such as VHTR’s, LFR’s, and MSR’s) could theoretically generate H2 thermochemically as a byproduct (via thermal hydrolysis), in a controlled fashion. Think about all the possibilities: deoxygenation of bio-oil, hydroprocessing of fatty acids and esters, Fischer-Tropsch, or water-gas shift. This aspect alone makes the case. Here is a list of companies in the space with these reactor types (potential target partners)⁵. Because hydrogen is a valuable commodity, a nuclear facility might be interested in charging near market value for it. Prices could be negotiated by making a case for minimal involvement on the nuclear facility’s part (a mile of H2 pipeline (to the biorefinery) as compared with compressors, storage, racking, and expensive H2 tube truck transport logistics if biorefinery wasn’t present).