Affiliations 

  • 1 Henan Province Engineering Research Center for Forest Biomass Value-added Products, School of Forestry, Henan Agricultural University, Zhengzhou, 450002, China; Microbial Biotechnology Department, Agricultural Biotechnology Institute of Iran (ABRII), Agricultural Research, Education, and Extension Organization (AREEO), Karaj, Iran
  • 2 Biofuel Research Team (BRTeam), Terengganu, Malaysia
  • 3 Department of Chemical Engineering, Isfahan University of Technology, Isfahan, 84156-83111, Iran
  • 4 Department of Chemical Engineering, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, 1050, Brussels, Belgium
  • 5 Department of Chemical Engineering, Isfahan University of Technology, Isfahan, 84156-83111, Iran; Department of Chemical Engineering, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, 1050, Brussels, Belgium
  • 6 Henan Province Engineering Research Center for Forest Biomass Value-added Products, School of Forestry, Henan Agricultural University, Zhengzhou, 450002, China; Microbial Biotechnology Department, Agricultural Biotechnology Institute of Iran (ABRII), Agricultural Research, Education, and Extension Organization (AREEO), Karaj, Iran; Biofuel Research Team (BRTeam), Terengganu, Malaysia; Institute of Tropical Aquaculture and Fisheries (AKUATROP), Universiti Malaysia Terengganu, 21030, Kuala Nerus, Terengganu, Malaysia. Electronic address: meisam.tabatabaei@umt.edu.my
  • 7 Henan Province Engineering Research Center for Forest Biomass Value-added Products, School of Forestry, Henan Agricultural University, Zhengzhou, 450002, China; Department of Agricultural Machinery Engineering, Faculty of Agricultural Engineering and Technology, College of Agriculture & Natural Resources, University of Tehran, Karaj, Iran. Electronic address: maghbashlo@ut.ac.ir
  • 8 Henan Province Engineering Research Center for Forest Biomass Value-added Products, School of Forestry, Henan Agricultural University, Zhengzhou, 450002, China; Institute of Tropical Aquaculture and Fisheries (AKUATROP), Universiti Malaysia Terengganu, 21030, Kuala Nerus, Terengganu, Malaysia. Electronic address: lam@umt.edu.my
J Environ Manage, 2021 Feb 01;279:111822.
PMID: 33348185 DOI: 10.1016/j.jenvman.2020.111822

Abstract

The huge amount of agro-wastes generated due to expanding agricultural activities can potentially cause serious environmental and human health problems. Using the biorefinery concept, all parts of agricultural plants can be converted into multiple value-added bioproducts while reducing waste generation. This approach can be viewed as an effective strategy in developing and realizing a circular bioeconomy by accomplishing the dual goals of waste mitigation and energy recovery. However, the sustainability issue of biorefineries should still be thoroughly scrutinized using comprehensive resource accounting methods such as exergy-based approaches. In light of that, this study aims to conduct a detailed exergy analysis of whole-crop safflower biorefinery consisting of six units, i.e., straw handling, biomass pretreatment, bioethanol production, wastewater treatment, oil extraction, and biodiesel production. The analysis is carried out to find the major exergy sink in the developed biorefinery and discover the bottlenecks for further performance improvements. Overall, the wastewater treatment unit exhibits to be the major exergy sink, amounting to over 70% of the total thermodynamic irreversibility of the process. The biomass pretreatment and bioethanol production units account for 12.4 and 10.3% of the total thermodynamic inefficiencies of the process, respectively. The exergy rates associated with bioethanol, biodiesel, lignin, biogas, liquid digestate, seed cake, sodium sulfate, and glycerol are determined to be 5918.5, 16516.8, 10778.9, 1741.4, 6271.5, 15755.8, 3.4, and 823.5 kW, respectively. The overall exergetic efficiency of the system stands at 72.7%, demonstrating the adequacy of the developed biorefinery from the thermodynamic perspective.

* Title and MeSH Headings from MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.