From the cell factory to the Biodiesel-Bioethanol integrated biorefinery: a systems approach applied to complex problems in micro and macroscales

Abstract

This proposal intends to face technological challenges put forth by a new conception of integrated biorefinery, taking advantage of synergies between the production processes of the two most important biofuels in the Brazilian context: 1st and 2nd generation bioethanol from sugarcane, and biodiesel from vegetable oils and of microbial origin. With this purpose, researchers with large experience in the area, coming from several Institutions in the State of São Paulo, have joined efforts: UFSCar (Chemical Engineering Department), UNICAMP (Faculties of Chemical and Food Engineering), USP (Lorena Engineering School), EMBRAPA Instrumentation (São Carlos). Liquid biofuels from renewable sources are the "backbone" of this biorefinery, based on biochemical routes, but higher aggregated-value molecules have their production studied as well, since they have an important contribution to the feasibility of the business as a hole. In an analogy with the oil industry, this biorefinery would be equivalent to a refinery + 1st-3rd generation petrochemical industrial complex. For the best of our knowledge, the exploitation of the numerous synergies that occur between the production processes of bioethanol and biodiesel is still incipient. The utilization of sub-products that nowadays are problematic, such as glycerol and the hemicellulose fraction of vegetable biomass, the production of totally renewable ethylic biodiesel, among several other examples, may have technically more efficient solutions if the production processes of the two biofuels are conceived in an integrated way, between the two biofuels and with the production of added-value molecules (such as 3-hydroxypropionic acid, aspartic acid, nanocellulose, carotenoids, biosurfactants, and so forth). All these research lines are interlinked by the techno-economic analysis of the processes, integrated within the biorefinery (seen as a macroscale, complex system), too. Advanced (Bio)process Systems Engineering tools will be applied, which allow feeding back targets to be met for the experimental researchers, in order to make the overall process economically feasible - at least according to a first, coarse analysis. In parallel, Biology Systems techniques are used to study the cell factory, seen as a microscale, complex system. Finally, solutions attained in microscale, leading for instance to a recombinant microorganism, will interact with the environment, within bioreactors - which are, in their turn, inserted in the macroscale process. In this way, (bio)process systems engineering methodologies may provide new insights for the analysis of micro- and macroscale phenomena. Such methodologies will help in the definition of the techno-economic viability of the industrial solutions - not forgetting aspects related to their environmental sustainability. (AU)