Techno-Economic and Environmental Analysis of Ethanol Production from 10 Agroindustrial Residues in Colombia

Abstract

This study evaluates the feasibility of industrial ethanol production from 10 agroindustrial residues in Colombia by considering production yields, profitability, and environmental impacts. For this analysis, sugar cane bagasse, banana stem, corncob, rice husk, sawdust, woodbark, mango wastes, palm residues, pineapple peel, and plantain peel were considered as feedstocks. For each residue, a techno-economic and environmental assessment was carried out using relevant data generated from process modeling. To do this, diluted acid pretreatment and enzymatic hydrolysis (using cellulases) of the lignocellulosic materials were selected as technologies. Besides, Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Pichia stipitis were selected as fermenting microorganisms under normal conditions. The production obtained from process modeling were compared with experimental ones from other authors. Yields between 0.009 and 0.264 kg of ethanol per kg of residue and production costs about $0.65 per liter of ethanol were obtained. Additionally, an average reduction of 39% on environmental impacts was obtained by the use of raw materials. Finally, it was found that four agroindustrial residues show profit margins and profitabilities of 40% over the cost of commercial raw materials in the process of ethanol production.

Techno-Economic Analysis of Cellulosic Butanol Production from Corn Stover through Acetone–Butanol–Ethanol Fermentation

“…1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 Furthermore, the estimated butanol production cost in this study was higher than estimated cellulosic ethanol costs (Table 3) While ethanol and butanol can be produced through same route and almost similar level of process equipment and materials (apart from microorganism and nutrient requirements), major variation in production cost is due to their yield (Table 3). Duque et al 59 evaluates techno-economic feasibility of 10 agro-industrial residues yielding ethanol from 0.009 to 0.264 kg/kg of residues. They found the average ethanol production cost of $0.65/liter, which is highly dependent on ethanol yield.…”

Agricultural Waste Management Through Energy Producing Biorefineries: The Colombian Case

“…It is impossible to find a good number of research works for PP in open literature as for the case of RH. But some authors as Ingale et al [44] as well as Duque et al [45] reported yields for ethanol of 0.38 kg/kg of PP after an alkali and enzymatic pretreatment and 0.259 kg/kg of PP after a dilute acid, and enzymatic pretreatment, respectively. These results are similar to the 0.2057 kg/kg of PP obtained in the present work.…”

Energy Efficiency of Biorefinery Schemes Using Sugarcane Bagasse as Raw Material

“…Between 2014 and 2015, the world production of sugarcane accounted for 175.1 million metric tons [10]. SCB is a residue that is rich in polysaccharides, and that is widely studied in the production of biofuels [11], and chemicals such as ethanol, xylitol, electricity, biopolymers, antioxidants, and lactic acid, among others [2,12,13]. SCB has a high potential for the generation of energy through the application of the gasification process [12].…”