REALITIES AND PROSPECTS OF FUTURE COMPLEX PROCESSING OF PLANT RAW MATERIALS INTO BIOTHETANOL AND BY-PRODUCTS

Abstract

The use of plant biomass as a primary source of energy is currently unacceptable both from an economic and environmental point of view. The experience of a number of industries, in particular hydrolysis production, enables to solve the problem of profitability of organic biomass treatment by its deep complex processing with the resulting components whose cost exceeds the cost of organic raw materials as fuel. Currently, the main results of complex processing of organic raw materials are still energy-intensive products ̶ bioethanol and hydrolyzed lignin, which energy characteristics are commensurate with fossil fuels. Bioethanol production from starch-containing, sugar-containing or lignocellulosic raw materials requires the use of different technological stages and, accordingly, the cost of bioethanol for each type of raw material is different. Compared to bioethanol produced from sugar and starch raw materials, bioethanol manufactured from lignocellulosic raw materials is more expensive. Bioethanol obtained from lignocellulosic raw materials is more expensive compared to bioethanol from sugar and starch raw materials. The most energy-intensive in the technology of bioethanol obtaining from lignocellulosic raw materials is the stage of pretreatment of raw materials for hydrolysis, because the process of preliminary preparation and hydrolysis with dilute acids occurs at high temperatures and pressures. During enzymatic hydrolysis, the process temperature is maintained for a long time (up to several days). To ensure deep integrated processing of plant raw materials, as well as to reduce overall costs, it was proposed to improve the technology and equipment, which allow increasing the degree of conversion of raw materials into basic and by-products.