A techno-economic evaluation of the effects of centralized cellulosic ethanol and co-products refinery options with sugarcane mill clustering

This work compares the calculated techno-economic performance for thermochemical and biochemical conversion of sugarcane residues, considering future conversion plants adjacent to sugarcane mills in Brazil. Process models developed by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory were adapted to reflect the Brazilian feedstock composition and used to estimate the cost and performance of these two conversion technologies. Models assumed that surplus bagasse from the mill would be used as the feedstock for conversion, while cane trash collected from the field would be used as supplementary fuel at the mill. The integration of the conversion technology to the mill enabled an additional ethanol production of 0.033 m3 per tonne of cane for the biochemical process and 0.025 m3 t−1 of cane plus 0.004 m3 t−1 of cane of higher alcohols for the thermochemical process. For both cases, electricity is an important co-product for the biorefinery, but especially for biochemical conversion, with surpluses of about 50 kWh t−1 of cane. The economic performance of the two technologies is quite similar in terms of the minimum ethanol selling price (MESP), at 318 $ m−3 (United States 2007 dollars) for biochemical conversion and 329 $ m−3 for thermochemical conversion.