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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Victor Grisales DiazORCiD, Dr Mark Willis
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND).
This paper considers the economic assessment and optimisation of a bioethanol production process using corn stover (CS) as the feedstock. This includes a comparison between the use of batch and fed-batch reactors with and without deacetylation. As a basis of the study, a kinetic model describing the co-fermentation of substrates producing ethanol using Zymomonas mobilis is proposed. The model extends work available in the literature to include acetate inhibition. The reported optimisation studies include realistic variations in feedstock quality, deacetylation, a mechanical pre-treatment stage and a green recovery system: extractive distillation with vapour compression. Results indicate that the use of fed-batch reactors using a deacetylation stage achieves an ethanol yield of between 267 and 334 L/ton dry basis of CS and economic potential of between 0.4-5.5 MM USD/year higher than the use of batch reactors. This also has the lowest energy requirements in the product recovery stage (3.2-3.4 MJ-fuel/kg-ethanol or 1.6-1.8 MJ/kg-ethanol). Omitting de-acetylation prior to hydrolysis/co-fermentation increases the minimum ethanol selling price and energy requirements by ~3-14% and ~8-30%, respectively.
Author(s): Grisales Díaz VH, Willis MJ
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Energy Conversion and Management
Year: 2019
Volume: 202
Print publication date: 15/12/2019
Online publication date: 25/10/2019
Acceptance date: 15/10/2019
Date deposited: 28/10/2019
ISSN (print): 0196-8904
ISSN (electronic): 1879-2227
Publisher: Elsevier
URL: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enconman.2019.112200
DOI: 10.1016/j.enconman.2019.112200
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