In
a carbon-neutral economy, biorefineries may replace oil refineries,
providing materials and molecules. One of these products are biosurfactants
(BSs), which can be produced from sugarcane bagasse. Two different
processes for BS production were proposed and evaluated from a technoeconomic
environmental perspective. Global sensitivity and uncertainty analyses
(GSA and UA) assessed the most influential variables and the uncertainties
regarding the minimum BS selling price (MBSSP), together with several
environmental metrics. Both processes presented positive economic
performance. The analysis showed that the second scenario (using liquid
hot water pretreatment without detoxification and BS recovery by two
steps of ultrafiltration) presented superior economic and environmental
performance. The second scenario had a 59.7% probability of having
a MBSSP below 20 $/kg, against 47.1% for the first one. GSA showed
that effort should be focused on decreasing uncertainty regarding
the bioreactor performance and scaleup (for both scenarios) and the
ultrafiltration performance (for the second scenario).
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