Techno-economic analysis of ethanol production from lignocellulosic biomass-a comparison of fermentation, thermo catalytic, and chemocatalytic technologies.

ABSTRACT

Bioethanol produced from 2nd generation biomass comprising of agricultural residues and forest wastes is a viable alternate fuel. Besides fermentation and biomass gasification to syngas and its further conversion to ethanol, a direct chemocatalytic conversion of lignocellulosic biomass into ethanol is being investigated as a viable route which avoids the emission of greenhouse gases. In this work, a detailed configuration of chemocatalytic route is simulated and optimized for minimizing the cost of ethanol production. The economic feasibility of ethanol production through the chemocatalytic pathway is analyzed. The techno-economic analysis is conducted in terms of ethanol selectivity and ethanol production cost. The obtained results show that biomass feedstock and catalyst have major contributions to the production cost. The proposed route is found to be giving a lower ethanol selling price as compared to the well-researched routes of biomass fermentation to ethanol and biomass gasification followed by syngas conversion to ethanol.