Biomass and Bioenergy

Biography

Biography: Lorena Pedraza

Abstract

Lignocellulosic biomass can be employed to generate diverse chemicals, even though it has been mainly used as fuel.  In Mexico, the main source of lignocellulosic materials are agricultural wastes, for example, residues obtained from corn, which is the main agricultural product in the country. Although corn stover is employed as animal feed and corn cob as fuel in rural communities, both residues are underused, which boosts their accumulation as wastes. It is estimated that 4 million tons of corn cob were generated in

2016. Such residue was proposed as raw material in a biorefinery for production of bioethanol, enhancing its applications and decreasing pollution derived from its accumulation. Nevertheless, the preliminary techno- economic analysis showed that the project was not feasible; therefore, generating diverse chemicals like lactic acid, succinic acid, xylitol and lignosulfonates, was considered. These products were selected according to their demand in the country. A multi objective optimization approach was employed  to  find  an  optimal  product  distribution for  the biorefinery shown in Figure 1 that cope with economic (EPI), environmental (RSEI) and safety (SI) indexes. Through this strategy, an efficient solution with an EPI of 0.16 is achieved, generating an annual utility of 70 kUSD when xylitol and bioethanol production are favored over succinic acid and lactic acid. This tool can be applied with different feedstocks and products in a biorefinery scheme, with kinetic and yield data for corresponding processes.