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A detailed breakdown of the processes in a conventional ethanol plant. A detailed breakdown of the processes in a conventional ethanol plant.
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The bioethanol industry continues improving sustainability, specifically focused on plant energy and GHG emission management. Dried distiller grains with solubles (DDGS) is a byproduct of ethanol fermentation and is used for animal feed. DDGS is a relatively low-value bulk product that decays, causes odor, and is challenging to manage. The aim of t...
Contexts in source publication
Context 1
... schematic below shows the simplified technological process of bioethanol production from corn. It requires natural gas (for heat) and generates waste (a highly unstable, difficult to manage and store byproduct, DDGS) (Figure 3). Based on the model, ~358,245 tons of corn must be utilized per year to produce 123,984 tons per year of denatured bioethanol. ...
Context 2
... schematic below shows the simplified technological process of bioethanol production from corn. It requires natural gas (for heat) and generates waste (a highly unstable, difficult to manage and store byproduct, DDGS) (Figure 3). Concerning the environmental issues related to bioethanol production, the total emission of CO 2 127,884 t CO 2 ·y −1, consisting of the sum of natural gas use (30,659 t CO 2 ·y −1 ) and fermentation process (97,225 t CO 2 ·y −1 ) (Supplementary Materials, Technoeconomic Model.xlsx). ...
Citations
... The techno-economic analysis papers in this literature review are categorized into two groups: (1) papers exploring the economics of converting distillers' grains to biofuel [100][101][102][103] and (2) using novel processes to enhance distillers' grains' production or value [3,[104][105][106][107][108][109][110][111]. Their publication dates ranged from 2006 to 2021, and all studies were based in the United States. ...
During the mid-2000s to the early 2010s, the domestic ethanol industry witnessed substantial growth, with ethanol coproducts emerging as vital elements for plant profitability and livestock feeding. Initially serving as supplementary revenue streams, coproducts from ethanol production have evolved into diverse value-added offerings, bolstering revenue streams, and sustaining profit margins. This study reviews existing economic research on ethanol coproducts, detailing methodologies, product focus, and research locations. Initially gathering 972 articles from 9 databases, 110 articles were synthesized. We find that most studies primarily examined the growth and future of the ethanol industry with a limited focus on specific coproducts. Feed-use distillers’ grains, especially dried distillers’ grains, were the most widely published while newer coproducts like pelletized, de-oiled, and high-protein distillers’ grains were relatively understudied. Non-feed-use products were notably overlooked, highlighting the need for exploration beyond conventional applications. The evolving market landscape for ethanol co-products has surpassed published academic understanding of the economic tradeoffs necessitating further research into product dynamics, pricing, marketing, market structures, and regulatory frameworks. This highlights and underscores the importance of investigating value-added grains across diverse commodities and geographic contexts to inform strategic decision-making and policy formulation.
... Torrefied biomass can also be used in co-firing applications, where it is burned together with coal or other fossil fuels, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and enhance the efficiency of the combustion process. Torrefied biomass of distillers' dried grain with solubles (DDGS) may improve the bioethanol plants' energy balance and economic performance when used as a solid fuel [49]. ...
This comprehensive review paper aims to shed light on the untapped potential of torrefied biomass for a broader range of applications beyond the energy sector. Furthermore, the review also provides insights into regional perspectives on torrefied biomass, considering factors such as available biomass resources, market opportunities, and regional policies that influence its adoption and use across different parts of the world.
... 、聚丙烯复合材料、阻燃聚乳 酸生物可降解复合材料 [8] ；生产丢糟酒 [9] ；改良堆肥方式并加入食用菌菌渣协同堆肥 [10] ；也 有企业将丢糟资源化，形成了"酒-气-肥-饲料-农"的循环经济产业链 [11] 。 国外由于酿酒原料、酿酒条件、酒糟成分等不同，酒糟处理途径与国内有所不同。一些 典型的案例有：利用热化学处理的干酒糟及其可溶物制备生物乙醇 [12] ；使用改良湿丢糟喂 养哺乳奶牛 [13] ；用玉米干丢糟制作猪饲料 [14] ；从玉米原料酿酒产生的干、湿酒糟中提取玉米 蛋白 [15] 等。国际上对丢糟综合利用技术的资源绩效和环境影响亦有较多研究，如:(1)单一 麦芽威士忌生产过程全球变暖影响研究 [16] (2)丢糟转化为可再生燃料和高附加值蛋白的生 命周期评价 [17] (3)白兰地酒庄碳排放、富营养化潜势等研究 [18] (4)利用生命周期评估小 麦生产伏特加酒的环境影响 [19] (5)针对蒸馏酒酿造行业实现碳中和的方案和原则 [20] 。国内 关于酒类酿造和酒糟处理全生命周期环境影响的研究案例尚较少，典型例子为于瑾泉等 [21] 对啤酒生产从摇篮到大门的生命周期环境影响评价，研究识别出温室效应及造成环境影响 ...
The Baijiu industry has witnessed a long-existing challenge for recycling the intensive distillers’ grains (DG) to minimize its impact on the environment. A new thermochemical technology is developed for DG disposal by recovering materials and energy, defined as the new technology. This research used materials/energy flow analysis and life cycle assessment to evaluate the environmental impacts associated with the new technology under different scenarios. The key findings, as compared with traditional technology, are as follows: 1) the new technology, in large
part, will contribute remarkable environmental benefits for the whole Baijiu
production processes while considering seven typical life cycle environmental impact categories, and in particular, the global warming impacts will decrease 40% to 60%. 2) Meanwhile, the new technology will bring additional environmental burden in three categories, including 9% in (eco)toxicity, 26% in marine aquatic ecotoxicity, and 73% in terrestrial biological toxicity. The reason is that the new technology has electricity consumption 19 times as much as that of traditional technology. The new system has higher impacts in 10 categories when the new technology generates hot water than that generates steam, of which global warming impacts can reach 49% higher. Based on life cycle assessment result, there are three methods to dramatically decrease the holistic environmental impacts for Baijiu production. 1) It is a priority to produce steam than hot water by using recovery thermochemical waste heat in the new DG disposal process. 2) It is necessary to use natural gas boiler instead of an electric boiler. 3) It is better to upgrade the energy-saving facility and energy-intensive processes during scaling up.
... A lot of innovations in terms of waste management, reduction, recovery, treatment have already been developed to divert wastes from landfills or to produce secondary materials or energy. For the latter, the applicability of thermochemical processes such as pyrolysis and gasification to various forms of wastes have been evaluated to produce alternative forms of energy that can be used to fulfill industrial energy requirements or serve as additional revenue streams to stakeholders (O'Brien et al., 2020). This anticipated decrease in the reliance on nonrenewable fossil-based energy is one of the important goals of CE (Antelava et al., 2021). ...
... The results have shown that microwave co-torrefaction can generate torrefied biomass with a heating value of 28 MJ/kg, a mass yield of 85.5 wt%, and a fuel ratio of 1.8 (Lam et al., 2019b). Lastly, the techno-economic benefits of integrating a torrefaction process unit in existing biorefineries have been argued to be feasible based on the results of (O'Brien et al., 2020). ...
The increasing awareness of waste circular economy has motivated valorization strategies for minimizing resource consumption and waste production in the private sector. With the rise of various industrial wastes and with the emergence of COVID-19 wastes, a sustainable approach is needed to mitigate the growing concern about wastes. Thermochemical treatment technologies in the form of direct combustion, torrefaction, pyrolysis, and gasification have been identified to have vital roles in the value-creation of various waste streams. Moreover, the alignment of thermochemical processes for waste mitigation concerning the circular economy framework needs to be established. Accordingly, a comprehensive review of the different thermochemical treatment options for industrial and the novel COVID-19 medical wastes streams is conducted in this study. This review focuses on highlighting the instrumental role of thermochemical conversion platforms in achieving a circular economy in the industrial sector. Various strategies in waste mitigation through various thermochemical processes such as management, recovery, reduction, and treatment are discussed. The results show that thermochemical technologies are beneficial in addressing the sustainability concerns on mitigating wastes from the industrial sector and wastes brought by the COVID-19 pandemic. This also includes the current issues faced as well as future perspectives of the thermochemical conversion technologies.
... O'Brien et al. [44] proposed further processing of the dried distiller grains with solubles into biochar called carbonized solid fuel (CSF). Based on their simulation, this would provide higher profit, as well as GHG emission savings, compared to a 1G ethanol plant. ...
Meeting the increasing global energy demand in a sustainable way is a major challenge for humanity. One of the solutions in the transportation sector is ethanol, which is currently the only economically viable direct fuel substitute. In addition to the first-generation technology, which provides the vast majority of production, better results can be continuously realized by using advanced technologies. This study aims to investigate the economic aspects and sustainability issues of ethanol production with a systematic literature review. During the selection process, 64 studies from a total of 16,141 identified articles were analyzed in-depth. There is a consensus that first-generation production methods cannot result in a long-term solution. However, advanced technologies are currently immature, and ethanol production is more expensive with them. The use of wastes/residues and coproducts can improve both the economic outlook and sustainability of the advanced technologies. Overall, the newer generations of technological advancements are constantly improving the environmental performance, whereas the economic performance is deteriorating. Considering low oil prices (0.36 USD/L), none of the ethanol production methods can be competitive on a purely cost basis. This increases the importance of coproducts (further processing and more valuable coproducts). Regarding sustainability, a complex analysis is essential, which must cover at least the environmental, social, and economic aspects. At the methodology level, a complex life cycle analysis seems to be the best tool, as it can take into account these relevant aspects (environmental, economic, and social).
A folyamatosan növekvő energiaigény fenntartható módon történő biztosítása komoly kihívás az emberiség számára. A közlekedésben ennek egyik eszköze a bioetanol, amely jelenleg az egyetlen gazdaságosan előállítható üzemanyag a benzin kiváltására. A termelés döntő többségét adó első generációs technológiák mellett egyre komolyabb a nem első generációsak szerepe. A bioetanol-előállítás gazdasági és fenntarthatósági kérdéseinek szisztematikus szakirodalmi áttekintéssel történő vizsgálata során az összesen 16 141 beazonosított cikkből 64 tanulmányt elemeztünk részletesen. Általános az egyetértés abban, hogy az első generációs termelés nem lehet hosszú távú megoldás, de a további generációknál még nem kiforrott a technológia, és gazdaságtalan a bioetanol előállítása. Ugyanakkor a hulladékok és melléktermékek használata egyaránt javítja a gazdaságosságukat és a fenntarthatóságukat. A termelési generációk között előrehaladva folyamatosan nő a környezeti és romlik a gazdasági teljesítmény. Alacsony kőolajárak mellett pusztán költségalapon a bioetanol-előállítás kizárólag a leghatékonyabb termelőknél (Brazília, Egyesült Államok) versenyképes, így jelentős a továbbfeldolgozás és az értékesebb melléktermékek előállításának a szerepe. A fenntarthatóság szempontjából pedig alapvető a komplex megközelítés, amelynek ki kell terjednie legalább a környezeti, társadalmi és a gazdasági szempontokra.
This thesis is comprised of four chapters, each of which discusses or conducts economic research related to the distillers’ grains market. The first three chapters are meant to be standalone papers. Chapter four provides potential paths forward in distillers’ grains research based on the findings of the first three chapters and concludes the thesis. The first chapter conducts a comprehensive literature review that categorizes and summarizes economic research on distillers’ grains products. This section shows how the physical market has moved beyond the current academic understanding of market products and structure. Existing research finds that traditional distillers’ grains products positively contribute to the livestock feeding industry, but much of the research covered in the literature review appeared in the early 2000s or shortly thereafter, leaving many current questions in the distillers’ grains industry unexplored. Chapter 2 estimates the magnitudes of and relationships between distillers’ grains price changes in response to the COVID-19 market shock using panel fixed effect models. The price fluctuations indicate that livestock producers favored the flexibility provided by dried distillers’ grains (DDGS) and, therefore, drove those prices upward more significantly than modified wet distillers’ grains (MDGS) and wet distillers’ grains (WDGS) prices. The disparate price responses by grain type and location offer some insight into how markets may respond in the event of future market shocks. Consequently, the results from this analysis can assist both ethanol plants and livestock producers in better preparing for future market shocks. The third chapter proposes an equilibrium displacement model (EDM) of the U.S. ethanol industry to estimate the short-run impacts of market shocks on prices and quantities in the distillers’ grains complex. The results of the EDM analysis indicate that the responses of ethanol and each type of distillers’ grain to market shocks rely heavily on the relationships between the products. Applying the EDM framework to real-world events can help both plants and producers in adjusting their operations to minimize the impacts of market shocks. Advisor: Elliott J. Dennis
