(408c) Technology Readiness Levels As a Framework for Techno-Economic Assessment

Techno-economic assessment (TEA) is an important basis for decisions about research, development and deployment (RD&D). Methods applied in TEA depend heavily on the availability of data which is closely linked to the development progress. Technology readiness analysis and especially its rating scheme, technology readiness levels (TRL), are popular concepts for rating the maturity of RD&D according to available data. TRLs can therefore serve as a framework that facilitates the choice of methods along RD&D by sorting them according to their required input data.

TRL rating is widely adopted in the evaluation of RD&D projects by government (e.g. policy makers) [1,2], industry and academia. However, as the TRL concept was developed for space exploration [3], a domain that integrates a variety of disciplines from mechanical, electrical and chemical engineering to aviation and medicine, TRL guidelines and criteria remain unspecific to technologies, which can lead to misinterpretation and overly optimistic evaluation. A variety of TRL definitions evolved over the years, for example for biomanufacturing [4] or for the defense sector [5], defining specific TRL criteria for their respective domains. The need for a specification of TRL analysis for the chemical industry was identified in a report of the European association of research and technology organizations (EARTO) [6].

In this contribution, we summarize existing TRL concepts and propose adaptions and extensions to criteria for TRL rating in the chemical industry: Firstly, TRLs are characterized by the description of the project phase, its tangible deliverables and other qualitative criteria. Secondly, for a more objective and comprehensible TRL, specific indicators representing known information of various aspects of chemical engineering such as reaction engineering or process development are proposed. In addition, quantitative indicators such as the production capacity are often used and therefore discussed for different types of processes in this contribution.

Furthermore, we outline how methods of (capital) cost estimation and profitability calculation can be sorted by TRL in order to give guidance for sound TEA.

We gratefully acknowledge the financial support by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) and the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).

[1] European Commission. EN HORIZON 2020 WORK PROGRAMME 2016 – 2017, General Annexes (European Commission Decision C (2017) 2468 of 24 April 2017), Annex G, Technology Readiness Levels (TRL); 2017.

[2] BMBF, Definition des Technologischen Reifegrades […] accessed on 08.02.2017 from https://www.ptj.de/lw_resource/datapool/_items/item_5502/definition_des_technologischen_reifegrades.pdf

[3] S. R. Sadin, F. Povinelli, R. Rosen, contribution at 39thIAF Congress, Bangalore, India, Oct. 8-15, 1988

[4] NSF Engineering Research Center for Biorenewable Chemicals (CBiRC). Technology Readiness Levels https://www.cbirc.iastate.edu/industry/technology-readiness-levels/ (accessed Oct 31, 2017).

[5] U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENCE. Technology Readiness Levels in the Department of Defense (DoD) https://www.army.mil/e2/c/downloads/404585.pdf (accessed Oct 31, 2017)

[6] EARTO, The TRL Scale as a Research & Innovation Policy Tool, EARTO Recommendations, 2014