Technical and environmental assessment of the power production from agroindustrial wastes

Hydrogen (H2) has become an alternative to mitigate climate change issues since its use in FC to produce power might contribute to reduce pollutant emissions. H2 could be established in the Colombian market by using biomass with low revenue to tackle the environmental issues. Therefore, the aim of this study was to determine the technical and environmental feasibility of power production from sugarcane press-mud, a residual biomass from the non-centrifugal sugar industry, by ethanol steam reforming (ESR). Said process encompasses the following stages: i) pretreatment; ii) bioethanol production and purification; iii) syngas production and purification to yield H2; iv) power production in a FC; and v) heat production in a burner. The environmental performance was done by Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) which gives a holistic perspective of the environmental impact. Collecting the data to build the Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) is one of the toughest tasks within LCA. Hence, experimental data along with simulation, and literature review served as tools to build the LCI and perform the impact assessment. Technically speaking, results showed that temperature pretreatment and catalyst loading were key factor during production of H2 from sugarcane press-mud. Likewise, supplementation with (NH4)2SO4 during fermentation allowed to mitigate fusel alcohol and increased H2 yield by ESR. Furthermore, the use of a bioethanol robust purification technology such as rectification is necessary to reduce the material and energy demand. The overall energy consumption was 54 kWh kg-1 of H2 which makes H2 from sugarcane press-mud a competitive technology. Environmentally speaking, the overall carbon footprint was 2.12 kg CO2-eq per kWh of power which is lower than the use of fuel ethanol as feedstock in the biofuel processor (2.98 kg CO2-eq per kWh).

• Fecha de publicación: 2020
• Institución: Universidad de la Sabana
• Repositorio: Repositorio Universidad de la Sabana
• Idioma: eng
• OAI Identifier: oai:intellectum.unisabana.edu.co:10818/45195
• Acceso en línea: https://hdl.handle.net/10818/45195
• Palabra clave: Hidrógeno; Producción de energía eléctrica; Ciclo de vida del producto; Aprovechamiento de residuos; Caña de azúcar; Aire -- Contaminación -- Medición
• License: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 Internacional