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- Lari, Giacomo M., et al.
(författare)
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Environmental and economical perspectives of a glycerol biorefinery
- 2018
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Ingår i: Energy and Environmental Sciences. - : Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC). - 1754-5692 .- 1754-5706. ; 11:5, s. 1012-1029
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Glycerol conversion into chemicals and fuel additives is pursued to valorise a burgeoning by-product in the bioenergy sector. To this aim, heterogeneous catalysts have been developed that enable, in many cases, efficient and green transformations. Still, the evaluation of the environmental and economic footprint that would be associated with their large-scale application has often been neglected, limiting their commercial attractiveness. Furthermore, the impact of integrating different glycerol upgrading routes within a biorefinery, which is highly instrumental to determine the effective sustainability and profitability of biodiesel production from vegetable oils, has not been assessed. Here, the manufacture of the most relevant chemical derivatives of glycerol is considered, i.e., lactic acid, acrylic acid, glycerol carbonate, propanediols, epichlorohydrin and allyl alcohol. State-of-the-art catalysts for each upgrading route are briefly reviewed. Based on their performances, processes are rigorously modelled and relevant indicators, the global warming potential, the cumulative energy demand and the operating costs, quantified by life-cycle analysis. Glycerol-based processes are generally found more attractive than the conventional technologies nowadays applied for the production of the same chemicals, among which the paths to lactic acid and glycerol carbonate are particularly promising. In addition, the process variables mostly contributing to the environmental and cost metrics are identified. Accordingly, future studies should target further optimisation mainly in relation to selectivity, solvent volatility, reactants ratio and catalyst stability. Finally, the processes are integrated simulating a prospective glycerol biorefinery and the advantages deriving from the exchange of heat between the different routes quantified. If the glycerol feed is split equally among all routes the CO 2 emissions and energy requirements are decreased by 15 and 32%, respectively, and the profit is increased by 5% as compared to the sum of the individual glycerol-based processes. In order to minimise the ecological impact of the biorefinery, glycerol should be rather divided in an 80:20 mass ratio among 1,2-propanediol and glycerol carbonate production, which are expected to have a significant market size. The innovative approach outlined in this work holds potential to guide both fundamental chemical research and process design in the development of CO 2 and other bio-refineries.
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| 2. |
- Morales, M., et al.
(författare)
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Sustainability assessment of succinic acid production technologies from biomass using metabolic engineering
- 2016
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Ingår i: Energy and Environmental Sciences. - : Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC). - 1754-5692 .- 1754-5706. ; 9:9, s. 2794-2805
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Over the past few years, bio-succinic acid from renewable resources has gained increasing attention as a potential bio-derived platform chemical for the detergent/surfactant, ion chelator, food and pharmaceutical markets. Until now, much research was undertaken to lower the production costs of bio-succinic acid, however a multicriteria sustainability evaluation of established and upcoming production processes from a technical perspective is still lacking in the scientific literature. In this study, we combine metabolic engineering with the most mature technologies for the production of bio-succinic acid from sugar beet and lignocellulosic residues. Downstream technologies such as reactive extraction, electrodialysis and ion exchange are investigated together with different upstream technologies such as neutral pH level-, acidic- and high sugar fermentation including metabolically engineered E. coli strains. Different biorefinery concepts are evaluated considering technical, economic, environmental and process hazard aspects in order to gain a broad sustainability perspective of the technologies. The results reveal that energy integration is a key factor for biorefinery concepts in order to be economically reasonable and to achieve lower environmental impacts compared to the conventional production from non-renewable resources. It was found that metabolically engineered E. coli with resistance at the acidic pH level in the fermentation together with reactive extraction in the purification presents the most environmentally competitive technology. However, E. coli strains with resistance at high sugar concentrations together with reactive extraction are revealed to present the most economically competitive technology for the production of bio-succinic acid. Moreover, both technologies are flagged for higher process hazards and require the right measures to enhance process safety and mitigate environmental loads and worker exposure.
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