(548j) Identifying and Addressing Potential Barriers Towards Commercialization of Novel, Thermocatalytic Non-Food Sugar to Acrylonitrile Process
AIChE Annual Meeting
2018
2018 AIChE Annual Meeting
Sustainable Engineering Forum
Poster Session: Sustainability and Sustainable Biorefineries
Wednesday, October 31, 2018 - 3:30pm to 5:00pm
As SR is scaling up the process from lab to pilot scale, several potential barriers towards commercialization are being addressed. Some of these barriers include, impacts of commercial sugar impurities (inorganic and organic) on catalysis and final product (ACN), ACN purity, catalyst scale-up, cost-competitive separation of intermediate products to obtain desired purity levels, collection and monetization of co-products and potential site and scale of ACN plant. Commercial sugar hydrolyzates consisting of ~70 different inorganic and organic impurities have been tested. Separately, sugar feeds spiked with ~15 of these impurities (one at a time) were tested to understand the fate and subsequent impact of each impurity. Purity of final ACN product has been tested and compared against commercial ACN samples to obtain drop-in quality and to provide feedback on sugar impurity levels. Each catalyst has been synthesized in large batch and tested in the final industrial form. ASPEN Plus simulation for intermediate separation has been conducted using industrially relevant units (distillation, flash drums). Experimental data are being collected on these separations using lab scale distillation column. Collection, purity and monetization potential of several co-products are being examined. This poster will highlight some of these addressed barriers and the resulting outcomes.