Abstract—The acetone-butanol-ethanol (ABE) fermentation process is a promising technology which utilizes renewable resources such as sugarcane bagasse into a number of products with high market value. In the proposed plant design, sugarcane bagasse will be used as the raw material in the ABE fermentation with
Clostridium acetobutylicum. For the analysis, it is assumed that sugarcane bagasse will be purchased and transported from established sugar mills. Using dilute acid hydrolysis, celluloses and hemicelluloses present in bagasse will be converted to glucose. The extracted glucose will proceed to the fermentation step in order to be converted to ABE products. Corresponding purification steps follow, based on the required purity grades of the products. The feasibility study aims to produce 157,853 tons of products per annum, catering a variety of industries such as the chemical, paint, polymers, plastic, food, and pulp and paper industries, among many others. The proposed design achieved a market value of USD 528 million from 350,460 tons of bagasse per annum and 28% internal rate of return
Index Terms—ABE fermentation, bagasse, biorefinery, process design.
The authors are with the Department of Chemical Engineering, College of Engineering, University of the Philippines Diliman, Quezon City 1101 Philippines (e-mail: cmmontealegre@up.edu.ph, ani.edrhum@yahoo.com, larallanera@gmail.com, keziaaa.castro@yahoo.com).
[PDF]
Cite: Charlimagne M. Montealegre, John Mark Edrhum M. Ani, Onella Kezia B. Castro, and Lara Louise R. Llanera, "Process Plant Design and Feasibility of an Acetone-Butanol-Ethanol (ABE) Fermentation Biorefinery using Sugarcane Bagasse and Clostridium acetobutylicum," International Journal of Chemical Engineering and Applications vol. 8, no. 3, pp. 162-168, 2017.
