Process Simulation And Techno-economic Analysis Of Lignin To Jet Fuel And Its Co-production In A Cellulosic Ethanol Biorefinery

With the rapid development of society,energy shortage has become a common problem for all countries in the world.With its advantages of clean,environmental protection,renewable,cellulosic ethanol has achieved great progress.But the enzymatic residue lignin of the cellulosic ethanol biorefinery has not been fully utilized.If it could be used for rational research and application,it is expected to realize the full utilization of biomass renewable energy and fundamentally improve the economy of cellulose ethanol refining process.In this paper,enzymatic residue lignin from cellulose ethanol biorefinery was used as raw material,and a simulation process of jet fuel production process was established through directly hydrogenation(HDO)of lignin.A techno-economic analysis model was used to evaluate HDO process and a 2000 dry metric tons perday cellulosic biorefinery with the coproduction of jet fuel.The main research were listed as follows:(1)According to the lignin distribution for the use of heat and power,in the cellulose ethanol standard case released in 2011 by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory(NREL),under different jet fuel yield(30%,50%,70%,90%),23.6%lignin flowrate(scenariol)and 76.1%flowrate(scenario2)from the ethanol biorefinery was identified.(2)Economic analysis of lignin upgrading process in a standalone facility was carried out,including the estimation of total capital investment and total operating cost,the minimum jet fuel selling price(MJSP)was estimated through discount cash flow techniques.Under the case of 23.6%lignin flowrate,30%jet fuel yield,MJSP was $6.34/gal,which was much higher than the market price $2.87/gal,lacking of economic competitiveness.The results also showed that MJSP decreased with the increase of lignin scale,and jet fuel yield.Therefore,the development of HDO catalyst with high activity and high selectivity could be the key to the industrialization of jet fuel based on lignin.HDO process with H2 produced on-site was more economically feasible than that with H2 purchased.In addition,through the sensitivity analysis of each component of the production cost,it was more feasible to reduce MESP through the reduction of labor cost and plant overhead cost.(3)The results of economic analysis of ethanol biorefinery with the coproduction of jet fuel showed that the minimum ethanol selling price(MESP)decreased with the increase of lignin HDO scale and with the increase of the jet fuel yield.Under 76.1%lignin flowrate,when the jet fuel yield was increased from 30%to 90%,MESP could be reduced from$2.834/gal to $2.474/gal,significantly lower than $2.83/gal in NREL2011,indicated that the corproduction of jet fuel was expected to reduce the production cost of cellulosic ethanol and improve the economic competitiveness of the whole production process.