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Over the past few years the world has witnessed substantial developments in the global production and the production capacity of ethanol. This tremendous growth in the industry is mainly driven by the following: petroleum prices, the reliability of traditional crude oil exporters along with political motives, adverse pollution effects and more spec...
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Our study analyzes the structural and economic changes brought about by the implementation of the EISA. The INFORUM LIFT model of the U.S. economy is extended with additional modules enabling it to analyze ethanol production, as well as to project consumption of motor fuels based on number of vehicles, average mpg, and miles driven. We compare two...
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... Papers focused on international trade and production of ethanol coproducts were in two primary categories: (1) United States coproduct exports [112][113][114][115][116][117][118][119] and (2) international coproduct production [120][121][122][123]. The publication years ranged from 2008 to 2019 and all focused on the export of DDGS. ...
... Trade and international use of coproduct papers with a specific focus on coproduct production in international markets explored the implications of ethanol and coproduct production in Argentina [119], the European Union [120], and South Africa [121,122]. Studies have found that ethanol production increased the competitiveness of feed industries in the countries and regions explored. The benefit of feed competitiveness was a result of DDGS reducing phosphorus contents of feed rations and reducing ration costs-both not available without DDGS [119]. ...
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.
... From a quasi-qualitative manner, this example created 31 jobs in 2009. The incentives for a nexus approach include economic efficiency, resource efficiency, and improved livelihood options [42,43]. Cheng-Ting et al. [44] analysed the economic performance of different crops deployment joint to the operation of a wind turbines, and proposed small-scale and renewable based irrigation systems could provide a viable alternative to polluting fossil-fuel powered generators. ...
In order to eradicate water–energy–food poverty, Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) proposed milestones to overcome the feeding problem. The development of water–energy–food (WEF) nexus management tools, and approaches has increased during last years. The aim of this research is to review WEF nexus management methods, tools, and examples to identify gaps, goals, or future development that arise when modelling goods management issues for designing a sustainable development framework. It is also presented the food–biofuel competition for resources problem focusing in threatened systems. In addition to the resource trade-off quantification issue, it proposed an analysis for WEF systems management from economic, environmental, and practical points of view with the aim of identifying results, challenges, gaps, or assumptions for nexus. The renewable energy highlights as an enabler for sustainable development.
... The enhancement also increases the relative protein content of the process byproduct: Dried distiller's grain and soluble's (DDGS) by up to 40% [12]. The relatively higher protein content DDGS earns a higher price comparable with other high protein animal feeds such as soybean oilcake [13,14]. ...
The development of ethanol industry for use as an alternative motor fuel has been steadily increasing around the world for several reasons. In South Africa, this industry is still in the early stages of development. In the National Biofuels Industrial Strategy, the South African government has made provision for support mechanisms to encourage investment in bioethanol production. There is thus an opportunity for grain-growing farmers to cultivate available or marginal lands for bioethanol crops, including triticale. This article examines the contribution of parametric uncertainty to economic feasibility studies for biomass-to-ethanol process plants. Monte Carlo (stochastic variable) simulation is employed as a tool to determine probability distributions for economic indicators (such as NPV and ROI) in the context of a proposed 200,000 tonnes per annum triticale grain ethanol plant located in the Western Cape province of South Africa. Three process technology scenarios are considered: a conventional starch-to-ethanol plant (Scenario I), an advanced starch-to-ethanol with grain fibre fractionation and energy recovery (Scenario II) and an integrated starch-cellulose plant where fractionated fibre is converted to fermentable sugars by pretreatment and enzymatic hydrolysis and then fermented to fuel alcohol (Scenario III). By modelling prices of raw materials and products stochastically, based on historical data, the concurrent fluctuations in prices are accounted for, incorporating a quantifiable measure of the associated financial risk to a typical (deterministic) economic prefeasibility analysis. Risk assessment of all processing options reveals that Scenario II is the most preferred fermentation process, achieving very high probability of economic success (98% probability of NPV > 0), suggesting that, under almost all conceivable circumstances of price fluctuation and plant availability, the investment will be successful. This is followed by Scenario III (96% probability of NPV > 0) while the least preferred option is Scenario I (93% probability of NPV > 0). The study also shows, however that without government subsidy, the plant exhibits only a 19% chance of economic success. Economic performance is shown to improve when fast-growing biomass is used to replace electricity as a fuel source for process heating. Monte Carlo simulation could assist energy planners, investors, and policy/decision makers to make a better management decision by identifying possible public policy that could be used to enhance the economic viability of the proposed ethanol plant.
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
The production of fuel grade ethanol from nonfood grade crops in South Africa has the potential to reduce reliance on imported oil and minimize the negative environmental consequences of fossil fuels. This article presents a preliminary assessment of the technical and economic feasibility of producing fuel-grade ethanol from nonfood, small grain crops cultivated on marginal lands in the Western Cape of South Africa, namely triticale, low-grade wheat, feed barley, and malt barley. It also explores the potential of grain fiber fractionation (separation of starch from bran) on process economics for a dry-mill process. A conservative “base-case” economic model was developed for a processing capacity of 200 000 metric tonnes per annum (tpa) at maximum expected feedstock prices. The overall average unit costs of production for each grain were compared for three possible process configurations, i.e. a conventional dry-mill starch-to-ethanol plant, an advanced starch-to-ethanol plant with fractionation and energy recovery from bran, and a hybrid integrated cellulosic plant with fractionation, hydrolysis, and fermentation of bran. Triticale demonstrated the greatest economic potential of all grains, regardless of technology type, while the advanced process technology option—fiber fractionation and steam generation from bran combustion—achieved the lowest overall costs of production, across all grain types. For the conservative base-case model, it was found that the government subsidy of ZAR 1.50/L proposed under the South African Biofuels Strategy is insufficient to ensure economic feasibility for any of the grains or technology options under scenarios with high feedstock costs. The government subsidy would need to be increased by at least 124% before profitable operation during times with high feedstock prices would be possible. A sensitivity analysis of the economic assumptions of the base-case model demonstrated that feedstock price is the most important determinant of production costs and that the economic feasibility of such technologies relies heavily on a favorable ethanol selling price. When assuming maximum theoretical starch–ethanol yields, and considering fluctuation in feedstock prices in the range from ZAR 1589/t to ZAR 3680/t (as observed in South Africa during the period between 2005 and 2012), the best economic results were observed for an advanced starch-to-ethanol plant processing triticale grain at a rate of 200 000 tpa (production cost between ZAR 4.25/L and ZAR 8.48/L). Due to uncertainty of commodity price fluctuations, it is recommended that static, deterministic models for economic feasibility should therefore be enhanced to incorporate uncertainty and quantitative risk assessment in process and economic parameters, by adopting stochastic simulation methods to account for price volatility.
