Journal of Fundamentals of Renewable Energy and Applications
Open Access

Development of an estimation model for the evaluation of the energy requirement of biomass pretreatments

International Congress and Expo on Biofuels & Bioenergy

August 25- 27, 2015 Valencia, Spain

O. Mafe1, S. Davies2, J. Hancock2, C. Du3 and J. McKechnie1

Posters-Accepted Abstracts: J Fundam Renewable Energy Appl

Abstract :

The production of fuels, plastics, chemicals and speciality chemicals from lignocellulosic biomasses via any biochemical route
requires a significant amount of pretreatment before efficient hydrolysis of the carbohydrate fractions can be achieved. Without
pretreatments, low product yields would be achieved, resulting in an uneconomical production process. Though essential to the
production process, pretreatments are expensive and energy intensive. Consequently, a lot of research has looked at optimising
the sugar yield and reducing costs in order to make the production of products from lignocellulosic biomass competitive. Here,
a mathematical model for the evaluation of the energy required during the pretreatment of lignocellulosic biomass for the
production of ethanol was developed. The model was developed using the dilute acid pretreatment process reported by National
Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) as the basis. It was then modified and applied to other common pretreatment processes,
such as alkali and steam explosion pretreatments. The energy consumption results of the various pretreatments were examined
and compared and some key inferences were deduced.