Enhancement of energy efficiency and economics of process designs for catalytic co-production of bioenergy and bio-based products from lignocellulosic biomass

Abstract

Summary This study presents an integrated strategy for the co-production of bioenergy (biofuels: butene oligomers) and bio-based products (biomaterials: cyclopentanone (CPON) and alkylphenols) from hemicellulose (C5), cellulose (C6), and lignin fractions of lignocellulosic biomass based on experimental catalysis studies. To evaluate techno-economic feasibility of the strategy, we performed a system-level design study with three steps: process synthesis, energy analysis, and economic analysis. The results of process synthesis show that all biomass fractions are effectively converted with high numerical carbon yields (C6-to-butene oligomers: 52.5%, C5-to-CPON: 68.2%, and lignin-to-alkylphenols: 13.3%) but an efficient separation system for high recovery of bioenergy and bio-based products is crucial. Moreover, an efficient design of a heat exchanger network leads that the total energy requirements of the process are satisfied by the combustion of biomass degradation products (humins). Finally, an economic analysis is performed to estimate the minimum selling price of CPON as the highest energy material (201 Mt/day of CPON production using 2000 Mt/day of corn stover feedstock processing). This result shows that the process ($1.79/kg CPON) can be cost competitive with current petro-based production approaches. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.