A Feasibility Study of Cellulosic Isobutanol Production—Process Simulation and Economic Analysis

Abstract

Renewable liquid biofuels for transportation have recently attracted enormous global attention due to their potential to provide a sustainable alternative to fossil fuels. In recent years, the attention has shifted from first-generation bioethanol to the production of higher molecular weight alcohols, such as biobutanol, from cellulosic feedstocks. The economic feasibility of such processes depends on several parameters such as the cost of raw materials, the fermentation performance and the energy demand for the pretreatment of biomass and downstream processing. In this work, two conceptual process scenarios for isobutanol production, one with and one without integrated product removal from the fermentor by vacuum stripping, were developed and evaluated using SuperPro Designer®. In agreement with previous publications, it was concluded that the fermentation titer is a crucial parameter for the economic competitiveness of the process as it is closely related to the energy requirements for product purification. In the first scenario where the product titer was 22 g/L, the energy demand for downstream processing was 15.8 MJ/L isobutanol and the unit production cost of isobutanol was $2.24/L. The integrated product removal by vacuum stripping implemented in the second scenario was assumed to improve the isobutanol titer to 50 g/L. In this case, the energy demand for the product removal (electricity) and downstream processing were 1.8 MJ/L isobutanol and 10 MJ/L isobutanol, respectively, and the unit production cost was reduced to $1.42/L. The uncertainty associated with the choice of modeling and economic parameters was investigated by Monte Carlo simulation sensitivity analysis.

Utilization of Agricultural Waste Biomass And Recycling Towards Circular Bioeconomy

“…causes wastewater generation) and closing nutrient loops and reducing negative impacts to the environment by eliminating discharges (i.e. wastewater) to underground and surface water sources (Roussos et al 2019). As we are aware that India is found to import 80% of the crude petroleum oils at incurring high rate of import cost, also due to burning of fossil fuel like petroleum oils and coals, it can cause the air quality in our atmosphere specially in urban India area and it can become more worsen level in day time due to ever-growing vehicle and tra c emission (Venkatramanan et al 2020).…”

Performance of Anisole and Isobutanol as Gasoline Bio-Blendstocks for Spark Ignition Engines

“…This includes sustainable feedstock and its conversion methods, engine compatibility, end-use performance, GHG emission reduction potential, and estimated price. Important raw materials for the production of both selected compounds could be forest residues [25], lignin [26], agricultural waste [27], and lignocellulosic herbaceous biomass [28]. The use of these feedstock types in biochemical and thermochemical conversion processes offers substantial WTW GHG savings compared to fossil gasoline [29].…”

“…The production of isobutanol starting from herbaceous biomass has also been demonstrated [30,45]. Other lignocellulosic feedstocks (i.e., corn stover), after a suitable pretreatment, can be subjected to a fermentation process, performed by genetically engineered microorganisms such as Escherichia coli and Saccharomyces cerevisiae strains [27]. Isobutanol is toxic for the microorganisms and it limits the sugar concentration in the fermentation broth [46].…”

“…Isobutanol is toxic for the microorganisms and it limits the sugar concentration in the fermentation broth [46]. Therefore, Roussos et al [27] suggested integrated isobutanol removal in the fermentation stage to ensure the proper functioning of microorganisms. Baez et al [47] have shown a similar solution and applied gas stripping to separate the product and lower the energy consumption.…”

Optimizing Microalgal Biomass Feedstock Selection for Nanocatalytic Conversion Into Biofuel Clean Energy, Using Fuzzy Multi-Criteria Decision Making Processes

“…Biofuel, especially, has proven to be the ultimate alternative for green and renewable energy production, which drastically reduces greenhouse emissions despite the high operating cost and the technological process irregularities in the involved supply chain (Chandel et al, 2018;Gardy et al, 2019). Due to renewable biofuel potential for green recovery, biomass production has recently attracted enormous attention worldwide for contributing to climate change mitigation (Roussos et al, 2019). In this context, biomass production is a non-toxic technology that creates renewable energy utilizing established procedures specific to the desired biofuel production (Sindhu et al, 2017).…”