Superstructure optimization of integrated fast pyrolysis‐gasification for production of liquid fuels and propylene

Abstract

Motivated by the apparent advantages of fast pyrolysis and gasification, a novel integrated biorefinery plant is systematically synthesized for coproducing premium quality liquid fuels and propylene. The required heat and fluidization promotion of the fast pyrolyzer are provided by hot syngas from the gasifier. Light gas and syngas from the fast pyrolyzer are finally converted to hydrocarbons via Fischer‐Tropsch synthesis. Multiple syngas production technologies, hydrocarbon production and downstream upgrading routes are incorporated within a superstructure optimization based process synthesis framework. This is the first article to investigate the benefits associated with the introduction of conventional catalytic cracking and dewaxing from a systems engineering perspective. Surrogate models describing the gasifiers and rigorous equations for Fischer‐Tropsch effluents validated by our experimental collaborator are introduced. Through investigation of five scenarios the primary parameters affecting overall economic performance are identified through ranking of the relevant candidates. Comparisons of the hybrid conversion route and stand‐alone routes are made. © 2016 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 62: 3155–3176, 2016

Synergistic optimization framework for the process synthesis and design of biorefineries

“…Especially for process design purposes, the ALAMO toolbox has been applied widely as a surrogate modeling technique with promising results [22,37,38].…”

“…However, this methodology has several shortcomings as it usually involves several iterations, which results in a long idea-to-process time, and does not necessarily yield an optimal solution for the process design, especially considering that biotechnological processes suffer from issues with the scale-up from laboratory scale to production scale [3,22].…”

Simultaneous chemical process synthesis and heat integration with unclassified hot/cold process streams

“…To overcome this limitation, Duran and Grossmann (1986) used a nonlinear programming (NLP) model with a set of inequality constraints to model the "max" functions that identify the pinch temperature for variable process stream temperatures and flow rates. This model has been used as a basis for subsequent work on process synthesis (Dowling & Biegler, 2015;El -Halwagi & Manousiouthakis, 1990;Kamath, Biegler, & Grossmann, 2012;Pattison & Baldea, 2015;Srinivas & El-Halwagi, 1994;Yuan & Eden, 2016). While the "max" function can be approximated (Balakrishna & Biegler, 1992), the selection of the parameters for the continuously differentiable function can be non-trivial.…”

Redefining Agricultural Residues as Bioenergy Feedstocks

“…For example, gasification can be used to convert a solid residual—generated in the production of bioethanol by a biological conversion technology—into gaseous fuels from which electricity, liquid fuels, and chemicals can be produced [ 41 ]. It has been also proposed to integrate the different types of thermochemical technologies; for example, Yuan and Eden [ 42 ] studied a novel biorefinery plant which integrates fast pyrolysis and gasification to produce premium quality liquid fuels and propylene.…”