Economic evaluation of technology for a new generation biofuel production using wastes

Κουτίνας, Αθανάσιος Α.; Bekatorou, Argyro; Kandylis, Panagiotis; Pissaridi, Katerina; Dima, Agapi; Boura, Konstantina; Lappa, Katerina; Tsafrakidou, Panagiota; Stergiou, Panagiota‐Yiolanda; Foukis, Athanasios; Gkini, Olga A.; Papamichael, Emmanuel M.

doi:10.1016/j.biortech.2015.09.093

Cited by 29 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 35 publications

(47 reference statements)

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“…Ethyl esters are non-hazardous organic compounds that have industrial applications as solvents (Hu et al, 2017), fragrances (Saerens et al, 2008), cosmetic products (Lee et al, 2014), and biofuels (Koutinas et al, 2016). These naturally occurring compounds (fruit flavours) have low toxicity and very limited impact on the environment; they can be easily hydrolysed to ethanol and native acids, which are biodegradable either aerobically (Bernat et al, 2017) or anaerobically (Pagliano et al, 2017).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Process intensification for the production of the ethyl esters of volatile fatty acids using aluminium chloride hexahydrate as a catalyst

Bitonto

Menegatti

Pastore

2019

Journal of Cleaner Production

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A new process for obtaining the ethyl esters of volatile fatty acids with ethanol by using aluminium chloride hexahydrate as a catalyst is proposed. Aluminium chloride not only exhibits good activity, composition equilibrium is achieved within 3e4 h at 343 K, but also induces a phase separation with a convenient distribution of the components. In fact, more than 99 %wt of the ethyl esters, together with most of the unreacted acid and ethanol, were found in the upper layer, which was well separated from the bottom phase, which contained the co-formed water and over 97.8 %wt of the catalyst. The intensification of this reaction and separation was thoroughly investigated and the operational conditions optimised. The effects of this separation on the purification of the final ethyl esters is fully investigated. A new configuration of unit operations is designed for the specific production of ethyl acetate, simulated through Aspen Plus V9® and compared with the current industrial process based on sulfuric acid catalysis. The overall production and purification of ethyl acetate is economically competitive, reduces the energy requirements by more than 50%, and is potentially a zero-waste process, resulting in cleaner production.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Process intensification for the production of the ethyl esters of volatile fatty acids using aluminium chloride hexahydrate as a catalyst

Bitonto

Menegatti

Pastore

2019

Journal of Cleaner Production

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“…Separated acidification has been proposed as the best technology to produce organic acids like lactic, butyric and acetic acid, even though it is still complicated to extract organic acids from the fermentation process [25]. …”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

From grass to gas: microbiome dynamics of grass biomass acidification under mesophilic and thermophilic temperatures

Abendroth

Simeonov²,

Peretó

et al. 2017

Biotechnol Biofuels

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BackgroundSeparating acidification and methanogenic steps in anaerobic digestion processes can help to optimize the process and contribute to producing valuable sub-products such as methane, hydrogen and organic acids. However, the full potential of this technology has not been fully explored yet. To assess the underlying fermentation process in more detail, a combination of high-throughput sequencing and proteomics on the acidification step of plant material (grass) at both mesophilic and thermophilic temperatures (37 and 55 °C, respectively) was applied for the first time.ResultsHigh-strength liquor from acidified grass biomass exhibited a low biodiversity, which differed greatly depending on temperature. It was dominated by Bacteroidetes and Firmicutes at 37 °C, and by Firmicutes and Proteobacteria at 55 °C. At the methane stage, Methanosaeta, Methanomicrobium and Methanosarcina proved to be highly sensitive to environmental changes as their abundance in the seed sludges dropped dramatically after transferring the seed sludges from the respective reactors into the experimental setup. Further, an increase in Actinobacteria coincided with reduced biogas production at the end of the experiment. Over 1700 proteins were quantified from the first cycle of acidification samples using label-free quantitative proteome analysis and searching protein databases. The most abundant proteins included an almost complete set of glycolytic enzymes indicating that the microbial population is basically engaged in the degradation and catabolism of sugars. Differences in protein abundances clearly separated samples into two clusters corresponding to culture temperature. More differentially expressed proteins were found under mesophilic (120) than thermophilic (5) conditions.ConclusionOur results are the first multi-omics characterisation of a two-stage biogas production system with separated acidification and suggest that screening approaches targeting specific taxa such as Methanosaeta, Methanomicrobium and Methanosarcina could be useful diagnostic tools as indicators of environmental changes such as temperature or oxidative stress or, as in the case of Actinobacteria, they could be used as a proxy of the gas production potential of anaerobic digesters. Metaproteome analyses only detected significant expression differences in mesophilic samples, whereas thermophilic samples showed more stable protein composition with an abundance of chaperones suggesting a role in protein stability under thermal stress.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s13068-017-0859-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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“…EEVFA are naturally occurring compounds, representing one of the main constituents of fruits flavors [22]. They can be considered as bioderivable solvents, since they are industrially obtainable through direct esterification of ethanol and VFA [23], which can be produced during the fermentation of sugars of different kinds as well as food waste [24], agricultural residues [25] and even from sewage sludge [26].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Efficient and sustainable recovery of lipids from sewage sludge using ethyl esters of volatile fatty acids as sustainable extracting solvent

Villalobos-Delgado

Bitonto

Reynel-Ávila

et al. 2021

Fuel

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This work focuses on the recovery of resources from urban sewage sludge. Sewage sludge is generated by water treatment plants and contains a significant amount of lipids that can be used in a number of applications in fine chemistry. This study reports the extraction of lipids from sewage sludge using ethyl esters of volatile fatty acids as solvents. A thermodynamic study was first performed using synthetic primary sludge in order to identify the best operating conditions to apply on real samples of urban primary sludge. Ethyl butyrate showed the best separation performance. It was capable of efficiently recovering the lipid component from primary sewage sludge, which typically resulted in 13-23 % of total solids. Highly pure calcium soaps can be extracted in high amounts (yield up to 93 %), while the exhausted residual aqueous phase resulted as not significantly contaminated by the solvent and could be anaerobically digested easily. Finally, calcium soaps can be directly used as biolubricant or efficiently converted into biodiesel using aluminum chloride hexahydrate as a catalyst (yield 85%).

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Economic evaluation of technology for a new generation biofuel production using wastes

Cited by 29 publications

References 35 publications

Process intensification for the production of the ethyl esters of volatile fatty acids using aluminium chloride hexahydrate as a catalyst

Process intensification for the production of the ethyl esters of volatile fatty acids using aluminium chloride hexahydrate as a catalyst

From grass to gas: microbiome dynamics of grass biomass acidification under mesophilic and thermophilic temperatures

Efficient and sustainable recovery of lipids from sewage sludge using ethyl esters of volatile fatty acids as sustainable extracting solvent

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