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In a previous paper, conceptual process design, simulation, and mass and energy balances were presented for an organosolv process with a hardwood feed of 2350 metric tons (MT) per day and ethanol, lignin, furfural, and acetic acid production rates of 459, 310, 6.6, and 30.3 MT/day, respectively. In this paper, the investment and operating costs of the process and the minimum ethanol selling price (MESP) to make the process economically feasible were estimated. The total capital investment of the plant was approximately 720 million USD. Lignin price was found to affect the MESP considerably. With a base case lignin price of 450 USD/MT, the MESP was approximately 3.1 USD per gallon (gal). Higher lignin price of 1000 USD/MT was required to equal the MESP with the December 2013 ethanol market price (2.0 USD/gal). In addition to lignin price, the MESP was found to be strongly affected by feedstock, enzyme, and investment costs. Variations in feedstock and investment costs affected the MESP by approximately 0.2 and 0.5 USD/gal, respectively. Changing the enzyme dosage and price from base case estimate of 5270 USD/MT and 0.02 g/g cellulose to more conservative 3700 USD/MT and 0.06 g/g cellulose, respectively, increased the MESP by 0.59 USD/gal.

No abstract

The integration of an ethanol production process based on prehydrolysis of softwood chips to a kraft pulp mill is discussed. A simulation model of this biorefinery has been created with WinGEMS simulation software to calculate the mass and energy balances of the biorefinery and to examine the effects of the integration on the operation of the pulp mill. Integrating the prehydrolysis process to the modeled pulp mill producing 1000 Adt/day of pine pulp would increase the wood consumption by 16%. With the increased wood consumption, 40 t/day of ethanol could be produced, and the excess power production could be increased by 460 MWh/day. The integration of the ethanol production process to a pulp mill would have considerable effects on the operation of the pulp mill. The coupling of hydrolyzate evaporation with black liquor evaporation would require major modifications in the evaporation plant. Due to the burning of organic residue from the ethanol process and to the increase in the heating value of black liquor, the load on the recovery boiler would increase by 31%.