(619j) Advanced Biorefineries: Process Design, Integration and Simulation Analyses

Biomass is the single source of functional organic chemicals and materials. Biomass is essentially made up of the same chemical elements (carbon, hydrogen and oxygen) as crude oil in varying proportions. This opens the possibility of producing biomass-based products that could directly replace chemically identical crude oil derivatives (e.g. ethylene from bioethanol can replace ethylene from natural gas). It is also possible to substitute chemically different products but having similar functionality (e.g. polylactic acid can substitute polyethylene terephthalate for plastic bottles). In this paper, state-of-the-art and emerging process technologies for the production of such chemicals and their subsequent derivatives will be shown alongside their design, simulation and performance analysis frameworks. It came very strongly from the ground-breaking and game-changing courseware by Sadhukhan et al. (2014) that biofuel and bioenergy production can make economic sense if high-value functional (low volume) products are co-produced in advanced integrated biorefinery systems [1]. This has renewed surge of biomass as a low carbon source of energy, combined heat and power (CHP), liquid transportation fuels known as biofuels, gaseous fuels, chemicals- commodity and specialty and materials- polymers and elements. In the most advanced sense, a biorefinery is a facility with the integrated, efficient and flexible conversion of biomass feedstocks, through a combination of physical, chemical, biochemical and thermochemical processes, into multiple products. In this paper, fundamental features and principles of integrated biorefineries will be discussed alongside most forward-looking project concepts and tools to design and develop competitive biorefineries and assess the sustainability of biorefineries.

Reference

Sadhukhan J., Ng K.S. and Martinez-Hernandez E. 2014. Biorefineries and Chemical Processes: Design, Integration and Sustainability Analysis. Wiley. A major textbook of Wiley: Advanced Textbook in Chemical Engineering & Industrial Chemistry and an Advanced Textbook in Green, Sustainable and Environmental Chemistry consisting of 625 pages paperback + 500 pages Web based problem solutions, 3 additional Chapters and 4 Design project studies.