Henan Province Engineering Research Center for Forest Biomass Value-added Products, School of Forestry, Henan Agricultural University, Zhengzhou, 450002, China; Microbial Biotechnology Department, Agricultural Biotechnology Institute of Iran (ABRII), Agricultural Research, Education, and Extension Organization (AREEO), Karaj, Iran.
Biofuel Research Team (BRTeam), Terengganu, Malaysia.
J Environ Manage. 2021 Feb 1;279:111822. doi: 10.1016/j.jenvman.2020.111822. Epub 2020 Dec 18.
The huge amount of agro-wastes generated due to expanding agricultural activities can potentially cause serious environmental and human health problems. Using the biorefinery concept, all parts of agricultural plants can be converted into multiple value-added bioproducts while reducing waste generation. This approach can be viewed as an effective strategy in developing and realizing a circular bioeconomy by accomplishing the dual goals of waste mitigation and energy recovery. However, the sustainability issue of biorefineries should still be thoroughly scrutinized using comprehensive resource accounting methods such as exergy-based approaches. In light of that, this study aims to conduct a detailed exergy analysis of whole-crop safflower biorefinery consisting of six units, i.e., straw handling, biomass pretreatment, bioethanol production, wastewater treatment, oil extraction, and biodiesel production. The analysis is carried out to find the major exergy sink in the developed biorefinery and discover the bottlenecks for further performance improvements. Overall, the wastewater treatment unit exhibits to be the major exergy sink, amounting to over 70% of the total thermodynamic irreversibility of the process. The biomass pretreatment and bioethanol production units account for 12.4 and 10.3% of the total thermodynamic inefficiencies of the process, respectively. The exergy rates associated with bioethanol, biodiesel, lignin, biogas, liquid digestate, seed cake, sodium sulfate, and glycerol are determined to be 5918.5, 16516.8, 10778.9, 1741.4, 6271.5, 15755.8, 3.4, and 823.5 kW, respectively. The overall exergetic efficiency of the system stands at 72.7%, demonstrating the adequacy of the developed biorefinery from the thermodynamic perspective.
由于农业活动的扩大而产生的大量农业废物可能会对环境和人类健康造成严重问题。利用生物炼制概念，可以将农业植物的所有部分转化为多种增值生物制品，同时减少废物的产生。这种方法可以被视为通过实现废物减排和能源回收的双重目标，发展和实现循环生物经济的有效策略。然而，生物炼制厂的可持续性问题仍然需要使用基于热力学的综合资源核算方法等进行彻底审查。有鉴于此，本研究旨在对包括秸秆处理、生物质预处理、生物乙醇生产、废水处理、油提取和生物柴油生产在内的全株红花生物炼制厂进行详细的火用分析。该分析旨在确定开发中的生物炼制厂中的主要火用汇，并发现进一步提高性能的瓶颈。总体而言，废水处理单元表现为主要的火用汇，占过程总热力学不可逆性的 70%以上。生物质预处理和生物乙醇生产单元分别占过程总热力学效率损失的 12.4%和 10.3%。生物乙醇、生物柴油、木质素、沼气、液体消化物、种子饼、硫酸钠和甘油的火用率分别确定为 5918.5、16516.8、10778.9、1741.4、6271.5、15755.8、3.4 和 823.5 kW。系统的整体火用效率为 72.7%，从热力学角度证明了所开发的生物炼制厂的充分性。
