Probabilistic techno-economic analysis of alcohol-to-jet sustainable aviation fuel: implications for design and decision making

Decarbonizing the air-transportation sector remains one of the most difficult barriers to mitigating climate change. Sustainable Aviation Fuels (SAF) are drop-in jet-fuel alternatives that has the potential achieving substantial reductions in environmental footprint without requiring major changes to existing aircraft or fueling infrastructure. In this work, we develop an open-source Python modeling platform for probabilistic technoeconomic analysis of SAF production via Alcohol-to-Jet (ATJ) pathways from bioethanol. The Minimum Jet Selling Price for the baseline biorefinery is 8.89 USD gal -1 , primarily driven by the bioethanol feedstock price. Additional important costs are associated with delivering and storing hydrogen gas. Mote Carlo simulation incorporating both process and market uncertainty shows that the SAF selling price ranges widely from 5.0-13.8 USD gal -1 under a varying set of design and economic assumptions. TEA results highlight critical research and development priorities, including cost-effective bioethanol production and improved hydrogen integration strategies. These systems analyses indicate that decentralizing ATJ biorefineries, particularly through retrofitting existing corn-ethanol facilities and integrating off-site hydrogen production with carbon capture and storage, offers practical routes to enhance economic robustness and accelerate the commercial deployment of costcompetitive SAF