Ethanol From Corn Stover Using SSF: An Economic Assessment

Abstract

Increasingly rising oil prices and serious environmental problems make biofuel ethanol production from biomass urgent; fuel ethanol plants are being commissioned and constructed at an unprecedented rate. In this article, economic analyses of ethanol production from corn stover were preformed, and the annual production rate was 1.42 million kg, the results from the study indicated that the unit cost for ethanol production was 15.21 US$/kg, which showed this process had a long way before approaching economic feasibility. Sensitivity analyses were carried out to study the effect of enzyme recycling on the production cost. When the recovery ratio of enzyme was increased from 50% to 90%, the unit cost of ethanol production decreased from 9.45 US$/kg to 4.96 US$/kg. In addition, when the pentose could also be utilized to produce ethanol, the cost of ethanol would drop to 3.36 US$/kg, which was close to economically feasible.

Keywords:

• ammonia pretreatment
• corn stover
• economics
• ethanol
• simultaneous saccharification and fermentation

Notes

^a In the base case, enzyme is not recycled and only glucose is fermented to ethanol.

^b Enzyme is recycled by 90% in the case.

^c Enzyme is recycled by 90%, and xylose is also fermented to ethanol at the same case.