Techno‐economic assessment of biofuels production from sugarcane bagasse

Abstract

The cooperative effect of climate change, rising fossil fuel prices and global fossil fuel depletion necessitates the production and use of renewable energy nationally and globally. The need for more energy-producing methods is growing as energy consumption rises. A techno-economic assessment (TEA) delivers an in-depth analysis of the financial feasibility of these processes, informing investment choices and policy development for biofuel advancement. Three biological biomass-to-fuel conversion routes were investigated in this study: fermentation for bioethanol production, anaerobic digestion (AD) for biogas production and dark fermentation (DF) for biohydrogen production. Aspen Plus software simulations were performed to process 51840 kg/h sugarcane bagasse (SCB). The discounted cash flow method was used for economic assessment using the tax rate of 28% and the discount rate of 12%, with a straight-line depreciation of 20% for 5 years. The plant life was assumed to be 25 years. The most profitable method was DF with an net present value (NPV) of 67.41 million USD, a payback period (PBP) of 3.3 years, an ROI of 1.51 and a PI of 7.95. Biogas production ranked second with an NPV of 37.57 million USD, a PBP of 4.4 years, an ROI of 1.16 and a PI of 5.85. Under conditions assumed in the study, bioethanol production was not feasible at all with the negative NPV. The project will not be able to recover its initial investment at the end of the plant's life.