Integrated techno-economic analysis and life cycle monetization assessment for sustainable transportation fuels: Electrified steam reforming and syngas fermentation of wood gasification syngas

The transportation sector accounts for over 90% of fossil fuel energy consumption and is a primary source of greenhouse gas emissions. Biofuels produced from wood gasification offer a pathway to decarbonization, but trade-offs between production cost, energy efficiency, and environmental externalities are rarely quantified within a unified framework. This study presents an integrated Energy–Economy–Environment (E3) assessment of three wood gasification pathways - conventional gasification (GASI-CONV), gasification with an electrified steam reformer powered by solar energy (GASI-ER), and gasification with syngas fermentation (GASI-FER) -modeled in Aspen Plus V12.1 and evaluated using a coupled techno-economic assessment (TEA) and cradle-to-wheel life cycle assessment (LCA) with ReCiPe 2016. Environmental impacts are monetized at the endpoint level (74,000 €/DALY for human health; 9.5 × 106 €/species.yr for ecosystem quality) and combined with the levelized cost of fuel (LCOF) to produce the Total Cost of Fuel (TCF), a unified metric that makes externalities directly comparable to production economics. GASI-ER achieves a hydrogen yield of 119.2 kg/h - 59% higher than GASI-CONV (75.0 kg/h) - at an LCOF of 26.2 $/GJ versus 34.2 $/GJ, and a TCF of $5.94 per 100 km versus $13.58 - a 56% reduction when environmental damages are included. GASI-FER show the highest TCF ($16.6–18.9/100 km) due to land-use and pollutant-related externalities. These results demonstrate that conventional economic metrics alone are insufficient for ranking biomass-to-fuel pathways, and that electrified reforming offers the most balanced combination of energy efficiency, cost, and environmental performance.