Techno-economic and Life Cycle Analysis of MixAlco® Processes for Mixed Alcohol Production from Brown Algae

The need for producing renewable fuels from biomass has increased due to depleting fossil resources and environmental concerns. However, the low fraction of carbon converted product is an undeniable drawback most current biofuel productions fermentation undecomposed lignin in composition loss as CO2. In this work, two main production routes MixAlco® process, ketonization route (KR) esterification (ER) are evaluated mixed alcohol by brown algae, a third-generation without lignin. A novel process using syntrophic bacteria consortia (SBC) developed produce acetic acid waste gas produced KR ER process. paper investigates integrated flowsheet these alternative routes, techno-economic life cycle analysis compare minimum selling price impacts. From TEA, we find that overall costs lower than SBC processes. cost routes. capital operating ER+SBC highest. Raw materials utilities major all processing examined. MSP lowest out four performs best terms impacts except water depletion compared with other processes, while worst regarding metrics.