Economic Assessment of Supercritical CO2 Extraction of Waxes as Part of a Maize Stover Biorefinery

International Journal of Molecular Sciences

Thomas M. Attard²  Con Robert McElroy²  Andrew J. Hunt¹ 

[1] Department of Chemistry, University of York, Heslington, York YO10 5DD, UK;

关键词: supercritical carbon dioxide (scCO₂);    wax;    maize stover;    cost of manufacture (COM);    fixed capital investment (FCI);    extraction;    biorefinery;   

DOI  :  10.3390/ijms160817546

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

To date limited work has focused on assessing the economic viability of scCO₂ extraction to obtain waxes as part of a biorefinery. This work estimates the economic costs for wax extraction from maize stover. The cost of manufacture (COM) for maize stover wax extraction was found to be €88.89 per kg of wax, with the fixed capital investment (FCI) and utility costs (C_UT) contributing significantly to the COM. However, this value is based solely on scCO₂ extraction of waxes and does not take into account the downstream processing of the biomass following extraction. The cost of extracting wax from maize stover can be reduced by utilizing pelletized leaves and combusting the residual biomass to generate electricity. This would lead to an overall cost of €10.87 per kg of wax (based on 27% combustion efficiency for electricity generation) and €4.56 per kg of wax (based on 43% combustion efficiency for electricity generation). A sensitivity analysis study showed that utility costs (cost of electricity) had the greatest effect on the COM.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2015 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.