(407c) Techno-Economic Assessment of Three Potential Pathways for Biomass Liquefaction

Biomass liquefaction is of interest within the biorefinery as it is a potential answer to the bottleneck formed from front-end materials handling. If the biomass could be transformed into a flowable slurry at the process entry point, then the material could more readily flow into the biorefinery pretreatment. Increased flowability will reduce downtime from any materials plugs that may form in the current design. Currently, the heterogeneous mixture of pelleted biomass and water can impede machine functionality and operability, which results in costly maintenance shutdowns. Liquefaction of biomass can potentially mitigate process bottlenecks. If a liquefaction process were to be installed at the front-end of an existing biorefinery, it would likely reduce or eliminate bottlenecks due to solids agglomeration. However, installation cannot be more costly than downtime losses. Through Techno-economic assessment (TEA), it is possible to quantify the reduction in losses via implementation of a liquefaction process. Three liquefaction pathways were considered: enzyme, maleic acid, and a combination of maleic acid+enzyme. The trade-offs in viscosity and equipment requirements were assessed using TEA to effectively compare the pathways to one another. All three pathways were simulated in Aspen Plus® Software.