Techno-economical study of ABE and biogas production from triticale straw using dilute acid pretreatment

Development of processes for production of biofuels from renewable resources is a key step in the way of moving from fossil-based to sustainable economy, which should be done in the following decades to mitigate the global climate changes. Butanol as an advanced biofuel has gained great attention due to its characteristics. In this study, straw of triticale, the first man-made cereal grain crop, was utilized for production of biobutanol and biogas. Dilute acid pretreatment, the most commonly applied pretreatment, was used for separation of hemicellulose content of the straw. Straw of triticale was pretreated with the 1% w/w H2SO4 at 140 ℃ for 60 min. The solid fraction was hydrolyzed by Cellic CTec2 (Novozyme) and subjected to ABE fermentation by Clostridium acetobutylicum. The liquid fraction of pretreated materials was used for biogas production. The wastewater was treated by upflow anaerobic sludge blanket (UASB) digester for rapid production of biogas. Economic feasibility of the overall process was investigated. The process was simulated by Aspen Plus and the economic feasibility was studied by Aspen Process Economic Analyzer. This process was designed to utilize 200000 tons of straw of triticale per year and produced 3920, 7869, 1760 and 9388 tones acetone, butanol, ethanol and biogas tons per year, respectively. Total project investment of a plant using straw of triticale was 136 million dollars per year.

کلیدواژه ها:

Techno-economic analysis ، triticale ، ABE ، biogas ، Aspen Plus