Slegers Petronella M, Olivieri Giuseppe, Breitmayer Elke, Sijtsma Lolke, Eppink Michel H M, Wijffels Rene H, Reith Johannes H
Biobased Chemistry and Technology, Wageningen University & Research, Wageningen, Netherlands.
Nova-Institute for Ecology and Innovation, Hürth, Germany.
Front Bioeng Biotechnol. 2020 Sep 8;8:550758. doi: 10.3389/fbioe.2020.550758. eCollection 2020.
The objective of this work was to identify industrial scenarios for the most promising microalgal biorefinery value chains on the basis of product selection, yields, and techno-economic performance, using biological characteristics of algae species. The development, value creation, and validation of several new processing routes with applications in food, aquafeeds and non-food products were particularly considered in this work. The techno-economic performance of various single product value chains (SP) and multiproduct value chains (MP) was evaluated for four industrial microalgal strains. Cost-revenue optimization was done for a 10 kton microalgal dry weight y simulated biorefinery plant, using flow sheeting software for equipment sizing, mass and energy flow modeling, and subsequent techno-economic evaluation. Data on yield, material and energy consumption were based on pre- and pilot size production plants (TRL 5-6). Revenue optimization was accomplished by first analyzing the performance of single product value chains of the microalgal strains. Subsequently, a strategy was developed to exploit almost all biomass based on the most promising microalgal strains. The cultivation costs are most of the time the major costs of the value chains. For the single product value chains common process bottlenecks are low product yields, especially for soluble proteins where only a small fraction of the biomass is leading to economic value. The biorefinery costs (excluding cultivation) vary significantly for various species, due to the species-specific operating conditions as well as differences in product yields. For the evaluated single product value chain scenarios the costs for utilities and other inputs were in general the highest contributing expenses. A biorefinery approach significantly increases the biomass utilization potential to marketable products from 7-28% to more than 97%. Although the cascading approach increases the total production costs of the multiproduct value chains significantly, this is more than compensated by the increased overall biomass revenue. For all selected multiproduct chains there is a significant potential to become profitable at a relevant industrial scale of 10 kton per year. Additional insights in the product functionality, quality, and their market size are needed to narrow down the wide range of foreseen product revenues and resulting profits.
这项工作的目标是基于产品选择、产量和技术经济性能，利用藻类物种的生物学特性，确定最具前景的微藻生物精炼价值链的工业场景。这项工作特别考虑了几种新的加工路线在食品、水产饲料和非食品产品中的开发、价值创造和验证。对四种工业微藻菌株评估了各种单一产品价值链（SP）和多产品价值链（MP）的技术经济性能。使用流程模拟软件进行设备选型、质量和能量流建模以及后续的技术经济评估，对一个年产10千吨微藻干重的模拟生物精炼厂进行了成本收益优化。产量、材料和能源消耗数据基于中试规模生产厂（技术就绪水平5 - 6）。收益优化首先通过分析微藻菌株单一产品价值链的性能来实现。随后，制定了一项战略，以利用最具前景的微藻菌株来几乎利用所有生物质。养殖成本在大多数情况下是价值链的主要成本。对于单一产品价值链，常见的工艺瓶颈是产品产量低，特别是对于可溶性蛋白质，只有一小部分生物质能产生经济价值。由于物种特定的操作条件以及产品产量的差异，不同物种的生物精炼成本（不包括养殖成本）差异很大。对于评估的单一产品价值链场景，公用事业和其他投入成本通常是最高的贡献费用。生物精炼方法显著提高了生物质转化为可销售产品的利用潜力，从7% - 28%提高到97%以上。尽管级联方法显著增加了多产品价值链的总生产成本，但总体生物质收益的增加足以弥补这一成本。对于所有选定的多产品链，在每年10千吨的相关工业规模下都有显著的盈利潜力。需要对产品功能、质量及其市场规模有更多深入了解，以缩小预期产品收入和由此产生的利润的广泛范围。
