Comparative study of two standalone thermochemical routes for the production of electricity from sugarcane bagasse

Brazil is the world largest producer of ethanol fuel from sugarcane. The sugarcane bagasse (lignocellusic residues of sugarcane mill) is used for the production of electricity in Conventional Rankine Cycles (CRC) performed at Combined Heat and Power (CHP) plants. The CHP plant based on CRC can be improved introducing advanced thermodynamic alternatives such as Advanced Rankine Cycles (ARC) and the Biomass Integrated-Gasifier/Gas Turbine Combined Cycle (BIG/GT-CC). An interesting alternative is the integration of those cycles into a first generation ethanol (1G) sugarcane biorefinery. The thermochemical group of the Division of Integrated Biorefinery Assessment of Brazilian Bioethanol Science and Technology Laboratory (CTBE) has been developing the thermochemical pathway in the Virtual Sugarcane Biorefinery (VSB) framework. From the surplus sugarcane bagasse of 1G biorefinery, the main objective of this work is to perform and compare two simulation models based on a thermochemical route for the production of bioelectricity using ARC and BIG/GT-CC. The simulation will be carried out using Aspen Plus® flowsheet simulator. Therefore, the two standalone thermochemical routes will be based on two different sugarcane bagasse pretreatment: the first one is the in natura biomass and the second one is the bioslurry, a mixture of biochar and bio-oil produced from fast pyrolysis process. The produced gas from gasification process will be cleaned and conditioned in order to be used into the ARC and BIG-GT/CC cycles. The results available through the two thermochemical routes (in natura and bioslurry) will be evaluated using sensitivity analyses.