Techno-Economic Analysis of Biodiesel Production from Microbial Oil Using Cardoon Stalks as Carbon Source

Autor: Marco Castellini, Stefano Ubertini, Diego Barletta, Ilaria Baffo, Pietro Buzzini, Marco Barbanera
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2021
Předmět:
Zdroj: Energies, Vol 14, Iss 5, p 1473 (2021)
Druh dokumentu: article
ISSN: 1996-1073
DOI: 10.3390/en14051473
Popis: Today one of the most interesting ways to produce biodiesel is based on the use of oleaginous microorganisms, which can accumulate microbial oil with a composition similar to vegetable oils. In this paper, we present a thermo-chemical numerical model of the yeast biodiesel production process, considering cardoon stalks as raw material. The simulation is performed subdividing the process into the following sections: steam explosion pre-treatment, enzymatic hydrolysis, lipid production, lipid extraction, and alkali-catalyzed transesterification. Numerical results show that 406.4 t of biodiesel can be produced starting from 10,000 t of lignocellulosic biomass. An economic analysis indicates a biodiesel production cost of 12.8 USD/kg, thus suggesting the need to increase the capacity plant and the lipid yield to make the project economically attractive. In this regard, a sensitivity analysis is also performed considering an ideal lipid yield of 22% and 100,000 t of lignocellulosic biomass. The biodiesel production costs related to these new scenarios are 7.88 and 5.91 USD/kg, respectively. The large capacity plant combined with a great lipid yield in the fermentation stage shows a biodiesel production cost of 3.63 USD/kg making the product competitive on the current market of biofuels by microbial oil.
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