Comparative techno‐economic analysis and reviews of n‐butanol production from corn grain and corn stover

Abstract

This work presents a detailed review and comparative analysis of the process design and economics of n-butanol production using corn grain and corn stover. This includes reviewing the most recent n-butanol technologies; demonstrating the impact of key parameters (e.g. plant capacity, raw material pricing, yield) on the overall n-butanol process economics; and comparing how cellulosic biomass conversion technologies and challenges differ from traditional sugar-based n-butanol conversion technology. A major challenge of n-butanol production is the low n-butanol yield (compared to ethanol), resulting in higher production costs. However, recent research efforts have achieved signifi cant yield improvements using a combination of genetic engineering, fermentation techniques, and integrated process development using continuous fermentation with online stripping to remove n-butanol during fermentation. This study presents the advances in n-butanol research for both sugar-based (corn) and cellulosic (corn stover) feedstocks, and also provides a comparison of overall process technologies and process economics. In addition, the results of a sensitivity analysis comparing various technologies, sugar yields, and coproduct distributions are discussed in order to provide research guidance.

Preliminary Investigation on the Electrochemical Activity of Butanol Isomers as Potential Fuel for Direct Alcohol Fuel Cell

“…Bio-ethanol is mainly produced by the fermentation of sugar containing material (starch and sugar based stocks such as sugar cane, corn etc.) by yeast (4). Bio-ethanol is now widely used as a gasoline additive, with the objective to reduce the fossil fuel content in the automobile fuel.…”

REVIEW OF BIOFUEL PRODUCTION – FEEDSTOCK, PROCESSES AND MARKETS — Review Article

“…'Classically' biobutanol is provided by fermentative pathways like the ABE (acetone, butanol, ethanol) fermentation; the main disadvantages of all these processes and the reason why they are hardy realised for the time being are the poor yields and selectivity to butanol for most of these processes (Tao et al, 2014). Additionally the production of biobutanol uses the same resources as the production of ethanol but the yields are significantly lower and the biocatalysts as well as process technology applied are not fully optimised yet.…”

Economic and environmental assessment of n-butanol production in an integrated first and second generation sugarcane biorefinery: Fermentative versus catalytic routes

“…Studies have pointed out the advantages of n-butanol as fuel in comparison with ethanol: n-butanol contains a longer hydrocarbon chain being more similar to gasoline (both are hydrophobic); may be mixed with gasoline and diesel at higher proportions [5,6]; Mendez et al [7] concluded that blends of butanol with jet fuel present promising performance; according to Tao et al [8], butanol fuel efficiency may equal that of gasoline; it may be used as oxygenate to allow more complete combustion, reducing carbon monoxide emissions [9]; it is capable of performing better for an http engine's cold start and may also be used as an additive to ethanol for that function [10].…”

“…Additionally, simulation can provide data required for estimation of economic [8,17,19,31,28,[32][33][34][35][36][37] and environmental performance [33,[38][39][40][41][42][43]. Previous recent studies from the authors of this paper have evaluated technical aspects and economics of n-butanol production from sugarcane sugars [17,32] and ethanol catalysis [19,30,44], as well as the environmental performance of the ABE process in a sugarcane biorefinery [42].…”