(586c) Developing and Integrating Sustainable Chemical Processes into Existing Petro-Chemical Plant Complexes

A wide variety of industrial chemicals can be produced from biomass feedstock that are produced from petroleum based feedstock. The chemical production complex of existing plants in the lower Mississippi River corridor is a base case of existing plants. New plants that use biomass as raw materials are integrated into the base case and include a transesterification process, a fermentation process and anaerobic digestion process. Other plants include gasification and pyrolysis as well as Fishcher Tropsch synthesis. Raw materials include algae, corn, sugarcane, soybeans or from waste biomass like corn stover, bagasse, and municipal solid waste. Products include polymers from fatty acid esters, propylene glycol and 1,3-propanediol from glycerin, ethylene and ethylene derivatives from biobased ethanol, acetic acid from anaerobic digestion. The Chemical Complex Analysis System is used to determine the best configuration of plants in a chemical complex based on economic, energy, environmental and sustainable costs. It incorporates a flowsheeting component where simulations of the plants in the complex are entered. Each simulation includes the process or block flow diagram with material and energy balances, rate equations, equilibrium relations and thermodynamic and transport properties for the process units and heat exchanger networks. Multi-criteria optimization is used with Monte Carlo simulation to determine the optimal configuration of plants in chemical production complex and sensitivity to prices, costs and sustainability credits/costs. Results from using the System had soybean and algae oil going from the transesterification process into polyurethane foams and propylene glycol. Ethanol from fermentation goes into the ethylene chain to produce polyethylene. Anaerobic digestion provides acetic acid and cellulose acetate. Gasification, pyrolysis and Fishcher Tropsch synthesis were not in the configuration of plants in the optimal structure.