Sunday, May 4, 2008
4-23

Integrated Forest Biorefining – A New Modeling Approach

Hua-Jiang Huang and Shri Ramaswamy. Department of Bioproducts and Biosystems Engineering, University of Minnesota, Kaufert Lab., 2004 Folwell Ave., St. Paul, MN 55108

In the near future, integrated forest biorefineries (IFBR) based on pulping mills could become the most important lignocellulosic biorefineries because dedicated energy trees such as hybrid poplar have not been available in large quantity and most of the available wood resources have already been used in the pulping mills and the facilities in the existing pulping mills, if developed into integrated forest biorefineries, could lead to reduction in the capital investment cost. Therefore, in order to analyze the process techno-economic performance and environmental effect, it is necessary to perform process modeling of a whole IFBR.

 The objective of the presentation is to develop a comprehensive approach for modeling IFBR, in order to achieve efficient design, simulation and optimization of the whole integrated forest biorefinery and to be able to perform the overall techno-economic analysis. An integrated method using two commercial process simulators Aspen Plus and WinGEMS and Microsoft Excel® as the communications interface between the simulators and a case study using the method are described. The comprehensive approach for modeling an integrated forest biorefinery and the mechanism of communications between Aspen Plus and WinGEMS with Excel as the communications interface is introduced with a case study.

 The case study show that the integrated method is efficient and reliable in modeling of the simplified IFBR. The method presented here is equally applicable for modeling the complex IFBR processes including biomass-based integrated gasification combined-cycle (BIGCC) or black liquor gasification combined-cycle (BLGCC), biosyngas conversions into liquid fuels and chemicals, and fiber separation, etc.


See more of Poster Session One
See more of General Submissions

See more of The 30th Symposium on Biotechnology for Fuels and Chemicals (May 4 -- 7, 2008)