Techno-economic and environmental assessment of biorefinery technologies

Abstract

This research project proposal represents the work plan and steps to be developed during an academic exchange from November 1, 2017 to October 31, 2018 in the Biotechnology and Society (BTS)/Bioprocess Engineering (BPE) groups of the Faculty of Applied Sciences at Delft University of Technology, TU-DELFT. The research internship abroad aims to contribute in the development of a methodology to carry out the comparison of technical, economic and environmental assessment for biochemical and thermochemical conversion routes integrated within a sugarcane biorefinery context for the following scenarios, ROUTE 1: Ethanol production (1G), Optimized autonomous distillery; ROUTE 2: Ethanol production (2G), Biochemical platform; ROUTE 3: Thermochemical platform. The first step to achieve this goal is represented by the conception and implementation of a multiple-criteria assessment approach (e.g. energetic, exergetic, economic and environmental) of sustainable biorefineries configurations. Afterwards, the application of computational tools to synthesizing and improve the processes efficiency looking for valorization of sugarcane biorefinery residues focused on bioethanol production and electricity generation. In the last phase a sensitivity analysis will be performed to both analyze the robustness of the designs and identify possible improvements of the most promising sustainable technologies with respect to multiple performance indicators for three scenarios. In this context, the activities to be performed at BTS-BPE/TU-DELFT will significantly contribute to the development of critical steps initially proposed in the project plan of this postdoctoral research, namely i). Comparison of selected technological routes ii). Assessment of thermodynamic indicators iii). Economic and environmental performances by using the global energy and exergy efficiencies, capital investment (CAPEX) and operational expenses (OPEX), overall CO2 emissions and CO2 equivalent index (exergetic base), as comparison metrics. It must be underlined that these research groups are linked to the "Horizontal International Project (HIP): From industrial interests to sustainable solutions in biobased economy", a BE-Basic project, that aims at identifying opportunities for the sustainable production of aviation fuel, marine fuel, and chemicals in the Brazilian context. Consequently, this research proposal will directly be linked to the HIP project, which represents a competitive advantage to identify opportunities for biorefinery processes aiming to support the gradual transition to a biobased economy in Brazil. (AU)