Catalysis Today, Vol.302, 61-72, 2018
Fermentation, thermochemical and catalytic processes in the transformation of biomass through efficient biorefineries
The use of crude oil as energy source and raw material to produce chemicals has deteriorated the environment. For this reason, biomass is a representative renewable energy source that has been researched to obtain different products and energy vectors through biochemical and thermochemical pathways. However, the inclusion of catalytic processes is an opportunity to obtain a great variety of value-added products and fuel additives. The objective of the present paper is to compare from a techno-economic point of view the influence of the implementation of catalytic processes to upgrade biomass components and its derivatives into compounds of interest through the biorefinery concept. The simulation of two biorefineries with and without heterogeneous catalysis was performed to compare and elucidate the catalytic processes impact into economic indicators. It was observed that the inclusion of heterogeneous catalysis is feasible from an economical perspective. The capital cost of each biorefinery were 56.13 M.USD and 64.93 M.USD, respectively. As a conclusion, the application of catalysis into biorefineries increases the number of valuable products that can be obtained from lignocellulosic biomass. Finally, the techno-economic assessment showed that the addition of catalysis into biorefineries is a feasible possibility that must be analyzed in future biorefineries.
Keywords:Catalysis;Biorefinery concept;Thermochemical processes;Biochemical processes;Oil palm rachis