生物炼制
过程集成
工艺工程
石油化工
原材料
夹点分析
制浆造纸工业
化学
有机化学
工程类
作者
Anil Kumar Varma,Bhushan S. Shrirame,Siddharth Gadkari,Kumar Raja Vanapalli,Vinod Kumar,Sunil K. Maity
摘要
Butanediols are versatile platform chemicals to derive a spectrum of valuable products. This study examines the techno-commercial feasibility of an integrated biorefinery for fermentative production of 2,3-butanediol (BDO) from sucrose of sugarcane (SC), followed by chemo-catalytic upgrading of BDO to a carbon-conservative derivative, methyl ethyl ketone (MEK) with established commercial demand. The techno-economics of three process configurations are compared for downstream MEK separation from water and co-product, Isobutyraldehyde (IBA): (I) heterogeneous azeotropic distillation of MEK-water and extractive separation of (II) MEK and (III) MEK-IBA from water using xylene as a solvent. The thermal efficiency of these manufacturing processes is further improved using pinch technology. The implementation of pinch technology reduces 8% of BDO and 9-10% of MEK production costs. Despite these improvements, raw material and utility costs remain substantial. The capital expenditure is notably higher for MEK production from SC compared to BDO alone due to additional processing steps. The extraction based MEK separation is the simplest process configuration despite marginally higher capital requirements and utility consumption with slightly higher production costs than MEK-water azeotropic distillation. Economic analysis suggests that bio-based BDO is cost-competitive with its petrochemical counterpart, with a minimum gross unitary selling price of US$ 1.54, assuming a 15% internal rate of return over five-year payback periods. However, renewable MEK is approximately 16-24% costlier than the petrochemical route. The future strategies must focus on reducing feedstock costs, improving BDO fermentation efficacy, and developing low-cost downstream separation process to make renewable MEK commercially viable.
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