Margarita Athanasia Charalambous


Last Name

Charalambous

First Name

Margarita Athanasia

ORCID

0000-0001-6097-0592

Organisational unit

09655 - Guillén Gosálbez, Gonzalo / Guillén Gosálbez, Gonzalo

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2022 - 20257
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Publications 1 - 7 of 7
  • Sustainable Development Goals assessment of carbon capture on-board
    Item type: Conference Paper
    Negri, Valentina; Charalambous, Margarita Athanasia; Medrano-García, Juan D.; et al. (2023)
    Computer Aided Chemical Engineering ~ Proceedings of the 33rd European Symposium on Computer Aided Process Engineering (ESCAPE33)
    The shipping industry of cargo containers is a very efficient freight mode, yet it is still entirely reliant on fossil fuels. While sustainable fuels penetrate the market, carbon capture and storage has been proposed as an interim solution for low-carbon shipping. In this work, we assess the technical feasibility, economic and environmental performance of a cargo ship with a retrofitted carbon capture plant on-board that captures 94 % of direct emissions at 85 $2019/tCO2. Compared to the current scenario, our solution reduces climate change by 50 %, while the direct air capture technology stands at a 45 % reduction. Our environmental assessment is based on absolute thresholds to quantify the impacts relative to the Earth's carrying capacity and shows that burden-shifting occurs in all the categories but climate change. Finally, the results are analyzed in light of five Sustainable Development Goals using 16 life cycle impact assessment metrics and their associated absolute thresholds.
  • Life cycle assessment and optimization of low-carbon fuel technologies
    Item type: Doctoral Thesis
    Charalambous, Margarita Athanasia (2025)
  • Onboard Carbon Capture for Circular Marine Fuels
    Item type: Journal Article
    Charalambous, Margarita Athanasia; Negri, Valentina; Kamm, Valentin; et al. (2025)
    ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering
    The transition to low- and zero-carbon fuels is the primary driver for reducing emissions in the maritime industry, with methanol and natural gas emerging as the most promising options. However, carbon-based fuels will continue to emit considerable amounts of pollutants during their use phase. This work explores the application of circular economy principles in the shipping industry by integrating carbon capture and utilization technologies. Specifically, we propose a closed-loop system where carbon dioxide (CO2) generated onboard is captured using a chemical absorption technology and stored until the ship reaches a port. The captured CO2 is then unloaded and transported to a fuel production facility, where it reacts with electrolytic hydrogen to regenerate the required propulsion fuel. Here, we evaluate the economic, technical, and future environmental viability of methanol and natural gas as circular marine fuels. Our findings indicate that natural gas could achieve a 65% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2050, while methanol could lead to 55%, both with a 91% carbon capture rate. However, there is an economic premium of 339 USD tonCO2 -1 for methanol and 260 USD tonCO2 -1 for natural gas. Additionally, the shift to circular fuels is expected to increase costs by a factor of 3-6 compared to conventional operations.
  • Planetary boundaries analysis of Fischer-Tropsch Diesel for decarbonizing heavy-duty transport
    Item type: Conference Paper
    Charalambous, Margarita Athanasia; Medrano-Garcia, Juan D.; Guillén Gosálbez, Gonzalo (2022)
    Computer Aided Chemical Engineering ~ 14th International Symposium on Process Systems Engineering
    Here we evaluated Fischer Tropsch-diesel (FT-diesel) use in heavy-duty trucks based on various production pathways differing in the CO2 and H2 provenance. To better understand the global environmental implications of fuelling heavy-duty trucks (HD trucks) with FT-diesel, we quantified environmental impacts over the entire life cycle using seven Planetary Boundaries (PBs) regulating the Earth's resilience. Our environmental assessment follows a well-to-wheel scope with the functional unit based on the global annual freight demand. The baseline scenario corresponds to the conventional fossil fuel. Our results show that the fossil fuel alternative is unsustainable as it transgresses the climate change PBs. Using FT-diesel based on captured CO2 could help operate within the safe operating space but it could induce critical burden-shifting if the CO2 and H2 sources are not adequately selected.
  • Integrating emerging technologies deployed at scale within prospective life cycle assessments
    Item type: Journal Article
    Charalambous, Margarita Athanasia; Sacchi, Romain; Tulus Merlich, Victor; et al. (2024)
    Sustainable Production and Consumption
    Climate policies will strongly affect future supply chains in ways that can be predicted using integrated assessment models (IAMs). The outcomes of IAMs are now being used to conduct prospective life cycle assessments (pLCA) where the background data reflects expected future changes in the economy. However, the technological representation of emerging technologies is often limited in IAMs, which cover a reduced number of routes, thus offering limited insights into their role in future scenarios. This study addresses this gap by integrating emerging technologies omitted in IAMs into future markets, providing a more robust foundation for pLCAs. Diesel, widely used in transportation, heating, and power systems, has established itself as an integral part of the world's infrastructure. Hence, to illustrate our approach, here we analyze the future environmental impacts of heavy-duty trucks fueled with synthetic Fischer-Tropsch e-diesel, incorporating our technology in the diesel market of the background system, through an integrated LCA approach. The standard non-integrated LCA would analyze these technologies in the foreground, assuming that the background is given. In contrast, our integrated LCA, which is particularly suited for cases where technologies in the foreground are deployed at scale, makes both systems consistent with each other. Our findings reveal mismatches in climate impacts depending on the climate pathway and technology of up to 35 % between the integrated and non-integrated approaches, which increase over time, particularly from 2020 to 2050, and are more pronounced when assessing highly carbon-negative or carbon-positive technologies. Overall, we stress the importance of having consistent foreground and background systems for performing more meaningful and accurate LCAs. Moreover, we provide detailed guidelines on implementing such integrated analysis in current software packages, aiming to enhance the reliability of pLCAs for emerging technologies.
  • Economic and Environmental Barriers of CO2-Based Fischer-Tropsch Electro-Diesel
    Item type: Journal Article
    Medrano-Garcia, Juan D.; Charalambous, Margarita Athanasia; Guillén Gosálbez, Gonzalo (2022)
    ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering
    Electro-fuels are seen as a promising alternative to curb carbon emissions in the transport sector due to their appealing properties, similar to those of their fossil counterparts, allowing them to use current infrastructure and state-of-the-art automotive technologies. However, their broad implications beyond climate change remain unclear as previous studies ma i n l y focused on analyzing their carbon footprint. To fi l l this gap, here, we evaluated the environmental and economic impact of Fischer- Tropsch electro-diesel (FT e-diesel) synthesized from electrolytic H-2 and captured CO2. We consider various power (wind, solar, nuclear, or the current mix) and carbon sources (capture from the air (DAC) or a coal power plant) while covering a range of impacts on human health, ecosystems, and resources. Applying process simulation and life cycle assessment (LCA), we found that producing e-diesel from wind and nuclear H-2 combined with DAC CO2 could reduce the carbon footprint relative to fossil diesel, leading to burden-shifting in human health and ecosystems. Also, it would incur prohibitive costs, even when considering externalities (i.e., indirect costs of environmental impacts). Overall, this work highlights the need to embrace environmental impacts beyond climate change in the analysis of alternative fuels and raises concerns about the environmental appeal of electro-fuels.
  • Absolute environmental sustainability assessment of renewable dimethyl ether fuelled heavy-duty trucks
    Item type: Journal Article
    Charalambous, Margarita Athanasia; Tulus Merlich, Victor; Ryberg, Morten W.; et al. (2023)
    Sustainable Energy & Fuels
    In recent years, liquid fuels from renewable carbon that can replace fossil ones with minimal infrastructure changes have attracted increasing interest in decarbonising the heavy-duty long-haul sector. Here we focus on dimethyl ether (DME), a promising alternative to diesel due to its high cetane number, oxygen content, and more efficient and cleaner propulsion that results in low particulate matter and sulphur oxide emissions. Going well beyond previous studies that quantified the environmental impact of DME, often in terms of global warming, here we evaluate DME use in heavy-duty trucks in the context of seven planetary boundaries, all essential for maintaining the Earth's stability. Focusing on several scenarios differing in the feedstock origin, we find that routes based on fossil carbon, either in the form of coal, natural gas, or captured CO2 from fossil plants, would increase the greenhouse gas emissions relative to the business-as-usual. Only scenarios based on renewable carbon could reduce the impacts on climate change, while hydrogen from biomass gasification coupled with carbon capture and storage (CCS) and DME from biomass gasification with CCS could enable an environmentally sustainable operation within all the planetary boundaries. Overall, our work opens up new avenues for the environmental assessment of fuels considering the finite capacity of the Earth system to guide research and policy-making more sensibly.
Publications 1 - 7 of 7