exploration of biomass for the production of bioethanol: “a process modelling and simulation study”

Bio-ethanol is a clean and renewable fuel that is gaining a significant attention mainly due to its major environmental benefits and its production from diverse resources. the campaign for establishment of bio- refineries and encouragement of fossil fuels is gradually gaining a greater attention. in this research work, we seek to comparatively investigate the material requirement, production yield, and total equipment cost involved in the rice-husk and maize-cob transformation into the bio-ethanol fuel for a large-scale production using a process modeling and simulation study in order to promote the potential investors' interest. this analysis is carried out using a simulator (aspen hysys) and a computational package (matlab). the evaluation entails modeling, simulating, and material and energy analysis including the process equipment sizing and cost for the plants. the comparative material analysis of the yield from the model process for the use of biomasses reveals that 9.94 kg and 7.32 kg of fuel-grade bio-ethanol is obtained using 0.03 kg and 0.02 kg of enzymes for every 1 kg of rice-husk and maize-cob charge in the plant, respectively, per hour. analysis of the plants' energy flow shows that the maize-cob transformation into the bio-ethanol fuel requires more energy than the rice-husk-based plant, confirming that the maize-cob conversion is more energy-intensive than the rice- husk conversion. moreover, the equipment cost analysis indicates that it costs $4739.87 and $1757.36 in order to process 1 kg of biomass (rice-husk and maize-cob) into fuel-grade bio-ethanol, respectively, per hour. ultimately, the findings of this work identify the rice-husk's use to be of high yield, while maize- cob makes the production less capital-intensive.