Multiproduct biorefinery optimal design: application to the acetone-butanol-ethanol system

Abstract

The bioproduct from biomass appears to be major interests for future years given the spectacular and fast advances in microbiology. But the industrial developments of the new bioproducts production struggle to follow this constant and massive creation. Therefore, to estimate the potential of new bioproducts is necessary to pre-design biorefineries with the highest relevance. This study proposes a methodology assessing the relevance of such industrialized production. The presented tool is a multi-scale methodology describing a decision-support tool for the determination of an optimal biorefinery from a superstructure through process simulation, and economic and environmental evaluations. To optimize the biorefinery, energy integration is also applied on the selected processes, because a biorefinery needs a large amount of energy to operate, especially in the pretreatment and purification steps of the process due to huge water flowrate. Thus, the tool designs an efficient, profitable and sustainable biorefinery. We demonstrate our methodology capabilities with the acetone, butanol and ethanol production (ABE system) from lignocellulosic biomass, especially from wood wastes.