Ectoine Production from Biogas in Waste Treatment Facilities: A Techno-Economic and Sensitivity Analysis

Abstract

The capacity of haloalkaliphilic methanotrophic bacteria to synthesize ectoine from CH 4 -biogas represents an opportunity for waste treatment plants to improve their economic revenues and align their processes to the incoming circular economy directives. A techno-economic and sensitivity analysis for the bioconversion of biogas into 10 t ectoine·y –1 was conducted in two stages: (I) bioconversion of CH 4 into ectoine in a bubble column bioreactor and (II) ectoine purification via ion exchange chromatography. The techno-economic analysis showed high investment (4.2 M€) and operational costs (1.4 M€·y –1 ). However, the high margin between the ectoine market value (600–1000 €·kg –1 ) and the estimated ectoine production costs (214 €·kg –1 ) resulted in a high profitability for the process, with a net present value evaluated at 20 years (NPV 20 ) of 33.6 M€. The cost sensitivity analysis conducted revealed a great influence of equipment and consumable costs on the ectoine production costs. In contrast to alternative biogas valorization into heat and electricity or into low added-value bioproducts, biogas bioconversion into ectoine exhibited high robustness toward changes in energy, water, transportation, and labor costs. The worst- and best-case scenarios evaluated showed ectoine break-even prices ranging from 158 to 275 €·kg –1 , ∼3–6 times lower than the current industrial ectoine market value.

Valorisation of cheese whey for ectoine production by Halomonas neptunia

“…Their findings revealed that the optimal concentrations for nitrogen (ammonium phosphate) and carbon sources (sucrose) were determined as 1.38 and 0.67 g/L, respectively. Researchers have also explored various waste materials to enhance ectoine production (Asiri et al 2020;Omara et al 2020;Chen et al 2020a;P erez et al 2021). For instance, Vibrio subsp.…”

“…The production of ectoine has been achieved using a variety of sources and wastes, including yeast extract, monosodium glutamate, carbohydrates (sugars), nitrogen sources (ammonium salts) and wastes (corn gluten meal, soybean meal, cotton seed meal, sunflower seed meal, glut feed meal, steep corn liquor, crude glycerol and methane) (Onraedt et al 2005;Lang et al 2011;Wei et al 2011;Bergmann et al 2013;Salar-Garc ıa et al 2017;Chen et al 2018;Asiri et al 2020;Omara et al 2020;Dong et al 2021;P erez et al 2021). In microbial fermentation, carbon and nitrogen sources are the most critical factors required for cell growth and for these cells to produce the desired compound.…”

“…2021; Pérez et al . 2021). In microbial fermentation, carbon and nitrogen sources are the most critical factors required for cell growth and for these cells to produce the desired compound.…”

Prospective CO2 and CO bioconversion into ectoines using novel microbial platforms

“…Further on, the use of consortia has been preferred for the production of ectoine from CH 4 in continuous, due to their higher resilience and two times higher ectoine productivities (Cantera et al 2020). In fact, a recent techno-Economic and Sensitivity Analysis of the production of ectoine from biogas in waste treatment facilities has demonstrated that the production of ectoine from biogas has high profitability with a net present value evaluated at 20 years (NPV 20 ) of 33.6 M€ (Pérez et al 2021). Nevertheless, despite the enormous potential of biogas as feedstock for ectoine production, its large-scale production is still constrained by the limitation of CH 4 solubility in liquid medium and gas-liquid mass transfer, eventually resulting in low product titers.…”

Future era of techno-economic analysis: Insights from review

“…Based on the TEA result, a process can be evaluated based on specified parameters and assumptions for a multitude of purposes. It had been conducted conventionally over the past two decades for various purposes, ranging from the evaluation of economic factors [i.e., net present value (NPV) (Lubello et al, 2021), payback period (PBP) (Datas et al, 2019), internal rate of return (IRR) (Olszewski et al, 2017;Gönül et al, 2022), return of investment (ROI) (Qian et al, 2014), discounted cash flow rate of return (DFROR) (Phillips et al, 2011), capital cost (Han et al, 2016;Jiang et al, 2020), general costs (Medina-Martos et al, 2020), profit or revenue (Pérez et al, 2021;Wiatrowski et al, 2022), economic potential (Touili et al, 2018;Bagnato and Sanna, 2019), overall economic feasibility (Comidy et al, 2019)], process factors [i.e., energy saving percentage (Kong et al, 2020), process parameter optimization (Yang et al, 2018;Samani et al, 2022), efficiency of operation (Bock et al, 2021)], and environmental factor (Fahmy et al, 2021;Shawky Ismail et al, 2022).…”