Experimental and Technoeconomic Assessment of Monosaccharide and Furan Production under High Biomass Loading without Solid–Liquid Separation
2022
Zhao, Jikai | Yang, Yang | Lee, Juhee | Zhang, Meng | Roozeboom, Kraig | Wang, Donghai
Excessive water and chemicals are often used in biomass valorization because of postpretreatment washing and wastewater treatment. To address this issue, three pretreatment scenarios (I: H₂SO₄ pretreatment with NaOH neutralization; II: NaOH pretreatment with H₂SO₄ neutralization; and III: parallel H₂SO₄ and NaOH pretreatments following their integration) with enzymatic hydrolysis were performed for glucose, xylose, 5-hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF), and furfural production at high solid (15 and 25%, w/v) loading without solid–liquid separation and further detoxification. With an initial solid loading of 25% (w/v), scenario I reached the highest furfural (4.94 g/L) and HMF (2.82 g/L) concentrations, scenario II achieved the highest glucose (73.25%) and xylose (77.49%) yields, while scenario III displayed the highest sugar concentration (74.53 g/L). Only the hydrolysate from NaOH pretreatment and enzymatic hydrolysis with 10% initial solid loading can be efficiently fermented to ethanol (17.92 g/L) by the traditional yeast. Technoeconomic analysis showed that hydrolase unit cost ($2.00–10.00/kg) notably governs the capital investment and annual operating cost. The lower annual glucose [197.28 thousand metric tons (TMt)] and xylose (52.11 TMt) output with sugar revenue of $255.05 million for scenario I was compensated by HMF (6.98 TMt) and furfural (10.31 TMt) output with furan revenue of $80.11 million. Scenario II had the higher annual glucose (208.46 TMt) and xylose (71.19 TMt) output than scenario III (glucose: 206.04 TMt; xylose: 65.32 TMt), but its total revenue ($286.01 million) was notably lower than scenario III ($330.71 million). This indicates that furans play a critical role in determining the potential value of the hydrolysate. A sugar minimum selling price of $2013.23/Mt was achieved by scenario III with the hydrolase unit cost of $4.00/kg. Sensitivity analyses revealed that the hydrolase unit cost was a dominating factor determining the sugar minimum selling price.
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