Techno-economic modeling of a corn based ethanol plant in 2011/2012

Abstract

As studies continue to examine new value added uses for ethanol coproducts, it is important to have means to easily determine the feasibility of the processing steps involved. Many industries widely use computer simulation programs for this purpose, and for planning the use of resources and equipment capacities, and to determine processing costs. The objective of this project was to determine the sensitivity of 40 million gal/y corn-based ethanol plant model to changes in input material prices, product market prices, and various coproduct processing scenarios (i.e., oil extraction and drying of DDGS). The techno-economics of the base case ethanol plant were examined by factorially adjusting material and market costs, as well as adjusting the quantities of distillers wet grains (DWG), distillers dried grains with solubles (DDGS), and corn oil produced. The simulations verified that corn price has the greatest impact on the overall annual operating costs for the ethanol plant, and that the market price of ethanol has the greatest impact on annual revenues. The effect of coproduct processing on utility usage was also observed; oil extraction and drying of DDGS consumed substantially more energy and had higher capital costs than production of DWG alone. It was apparent that coproducts are an essential component to the sustainability of an ethanol plant in that: 1) they have continued marketability to the livestock industry, and 2) processing is not overly-expensive. This study has provided a basis for further exploration of the feasibility of new coproduct processing options, and illustrates the use of the model for determination of processing costs and revenues, as well as mass and energy balances. ABSTRACTAs studies continue to examine new value added uses for ethanol coproducts, it is important to have means to easily determine the feasibility of the processing steps involved. Many industries widely use computer simulation programs for this purpose, and for planning the use of resources and equipment capacities, and to determine processing costs. The objective of this project was to determine the sensitivity of 40 million gal/y corn-based ethanol plant model to changes in input material prices, product market prices, and various coproduct processing scenarios (i.e., oil extraction and drying of DDGS). The techno-economics of the base case ethanol plant were examined by factorially adjusting material and market costs, as well as adjusting the quantities of distillers wet grains (DWG), distillers dried grains with solubles (DDGS), and corn oil produced. The simulations verified that corn price has the greatest impact on the overall annual operating costs for the ethanol plant, and that the market price of ethanol has the greatest impact on annual revenues. The effect of coproduct processing on utility usage was also observed; oil extraction and drying of DDGS consumed substantially more energy and had higher capital costs than production of DWG alone. It was apparent that coproducts are an essential compon...

Techno-economic Analysis (TEA) of Extruded Aquafeeds

“…In this study, the capital costs for each scenario were calculated based on the summation of the total initial equipment costs, building costs, and engineering/construction work costs (Wood et al, 2014). The equipment costs were obtained from different manufacturers/suppliers.…”

Recovering phosphorus as a coproduct from corn dry grind plants: A techno‐economic evaluation

“…A dry grind process model for 40 million gal/year ethanol production capacity, developed by Kwiatkowski, McAloon, Taylor, and Johnston (), was updated by USDA researchers in 2011 for more current equipment prices. This updated model is commonly used as a reference for corn ethanol process simulations (Wood, Rosentrater, & Muthukumarappan, ) and the same process model was used as a basis in the current study. The grain processing capacity for both the models was kept as 44 MT/hr, which estimated ethanol production as 40.8 million gal/year.…”

“…The plant was considered to have an operational run time of 7,920 hr, and the throughput was based on previously published studies (Kwiatkowski et al, 2006;Wood et al, 2014). The cost of equipment specific to dry grind process (grinder, fermenter, centrifuges, distillation columns, dryers) for liquefaction, fermentation, ethanol and coproduct recovery was calculated based on cost models of previous corn dry grind studies in the literature (Kwiatkowski et al, 2006;Somavat et al, 2018;Wood et al, 2014). Since equipment capacities vary among different studies and processing technologies, the costs of equipment required for the current process were calculated based on the specific size and flow rates, using the exponential scaling equation used in previous studies (Juneja, Kumar, & Murthy, 2013;Juneja, Sharma, et al, 2019;Kumar & Murthy, 2011).…”

Techno-Economic Analysis of Integrated Enzyme Assisted Aqueous Extraction of Soybean Oil

“…That allows the processing characteristic, equipment and economic parameters to be defined along with conditions, capacity and characteristic for each stream (Ngo et al, 2014, Wood et al, 2014. Based on the de Moure's research (2011), the 75 kg/hour of soybean input (pilot scale) was used as the base scale with 113.1 thousands kg of soybean oil annual production for scaling up to medium scale (17 million kg annual soybean oil production) and commercial scale (51 million kg annual soybean oil production), and the model is shown in Fig.…”