Retrofitting analysis of integrated bio-refineries
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Date
2007-04-25
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Texas A&M University
Abstract
A bio-refinery is a processing facility that produces liquid transportation fuels
and/or value-added chemicals and other products. Because of the dwindling resources
and escalating prices of fossil fuels, there are emerging situations in which the economic
performance of fossil-based facilities can be enhanced by retrofitting and incorporation of
bio-mass feedstocks. These systems can be regarded as bio-refineries or integrated fossilbio-
refineries. This work presents a retrofitting analysis to integrated bio-refineries.
Focus is given to the problem of process modification to an existing plant by considering
capacity expansion and material substitution with biomass feedstocks. Process integration
studies were conducted to determine cost-effective strategies for enhancing production
and for incorporating biomass into the process. Energy and mass integration approaches
were used to induce synergism and to reduce cost by exchanging heat, material utilities,
and by sharing equipment. Cost-benefit analysis was used to guide the decision-making
process and to compare various production routes. Ethanol production from two routes
was used as a case study to illustrate the applicability of the proposed approach and the
results were bio-refinery has become more attractive then fossil-refinery.
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Keywords
Biorefinery, heat integration, ethanol