Optimal processing pathway for the production of biodiesel from microalgal biomass: A superstructure based approach

Optimization of process configuration and strain selection for microalgae-based biodiesel production

“…In addition to the research on technology evaluation and comparison of different stages, Williams and Laurens (2010) reported an economic analysis of algae biomass production considering a number of process options and claim that "biofuel only" is unlikely to be economically viable; Singh and Olsen (2011) employed life cycle assessment to evaluate biochemical conversion systems, arguing that algae-based biofuels are environmentally superior to fossil fuels but economically not attractive yet. Unlike other evaluation-based studies, Rizwan et al (2013) recently developed a superstructurebased mathematical model for optimizing biodiesel production system. Nonetheless, most of the previous works have overlooked the microalgae strain properties that may substantially affect the processes efficiency and even alter whole optimal pathway combination.…”

Optimal processing pathway selection for microalgae-based biorefinery under uncertainty

“…To ensure/check the quality of the solution as well as the ease of the solution procedure, in our earlier work (Rizwan et al, 2013a) we also tested the approach of linearizing the MINLP model to an equivalent MILP form by using the technique by Glover (1975). The results showed that the same (optimal) solution is obtained from the both approaches.…”

“…Therefore in this study, the MINLP (or sMINLP) form is solved directly. A more detailed discussion can be found in our earlier study (Rizwan et al, 2013a).…”

“…However, many studies on microalgae-based biorefinery have been carried out recently but all these contributions focus only on identifying optimal processing networks for the production of biofuels from microalgae under a deterministic model (Rizwan et al, 2013a;2013b;Gebreslassic et al, 2013;Gong and You, 2014a;2014b, Rizwan et al, 2015. It is thus the objective of this paper to address and evaluate the effect of uncertainty on the optimal processing pathway for a microalgal biorefinery.…”

Optimal synthesis and design of the number of cycles in the leaching process for surimi production

“…To do this, a superstructure of alternative configurations for the leaching process design is proposed resulting in a Mixed Integer NonLinear Programming (MINLP) model. Superstructurebased models (NLP and/or MINLP models) have been applied successfully in several application areas such as, among others, energy systems (Manassaldi et al 2014(Manassaldi et al , 2016Oliva et al 2011;Zondervan et al 2011); wastewater treatment systems (Alasino et al 2010); multiperiod blend scheduling problems (Kolodzieja et al 2013); biodiesel production (Rizwan et al 2013); desalination seawater processes (Mussati et al 2006(Mussati et al , 2008. In this paper, the proposed MINLP model is used to determine the optimal process configuration, sizes of each process unit and operating conditions that minimize the total annualized cost for a desired production.…”