Impact of pretreatment and downstream processing technologies on economics and energy in cellulosic ethanol production.

ABSTRACT:

Background

While advantages of biofuel have been widely reported, studies also highlight the challenges in large scale production of biofuel. Cost of ethanol and process energy use in cellulosic ethanol plants are dependent on technologies used for conversion of feedstock. Process modeling can aid in identifying techno-economic bottlenecks in a production process. A comprehensive techno-economic analysis was performed for conversion of cellulosic feedstock to ethanol using some of the common pretreatment technologies: dilute acid, dilute alkali, hot water and steam explosion. Detailed process models incorporating feedstock handling, pretreatment, simultaneous saccharification and co-fermentation, ethanol recovery and downstream processing were developed using SuperPro Designer. Tal

SUBMITTER: Kumar D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3179443 | biostudies-literature | 2011 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature