BIOREFINERIES: INTEGRATION OF DIFFERENT TECHNOLOGIES - Biomass as a Sustainable Energy Source for the Future - page 492

TABLE 15.7 Capital costs for 150 million gallons per year plants (gasoline
equivalent, 2005 US$)

Total capital
costs (M US$)

Capital cost per unit
production (pbpd) a

Operating cost
(US$ per gallon) b

Fuel

Grain ethanol (1st gen.) 111 13,000 1.22

Cellulosic ethanol 756 76,000 1.76

Methanol via gasification 606 66,000 1.28

Hydrogen via gasification 543 59,000 1.05

FT diesel 854 86,000 1.80

a Per barrel per day gasoline equivalent.
b Gallons gasoline equivalent.

t −1 and of the price of corn was
assumed to be 2.12 US$ per bushel (1 US bushel = 35.1 l). A summary of their main
results is presented in Table 15.7. It can be seen that the capital costs are predicted to
be much higher than for first-generation technology. The smaller number of unit
operations causes thermochemical hydrogen production to show lower capital costs
than the other gasification-based options (methanol, FT diesel). Hydrogen, though
still has a long way to go for fuel implementation as storage and distribution systems,
must be developed, whereas the liquid fuels can be implemented in current infrastruc-
ture fordistribution. Methanol, however, is not yet widely distributed as fuel, which is
related to its associated relative toxicity. Cellulosic ethanol and FT diesel come out at
approximately similar values. Future enhancement in biochemical and thermochemical
platform technologies has a real potential for the reduction of biofuel cost prices.

Cellulosic feedstock costs were assumed to be 50 US$

15.4 OUTLOOK TO THE FUTURE OF BIOREFINERIES

The future sustainable society will expectedly be based on biomass as one of the key
renewable sources for food, feed, materials, chemicals, transportation fuels, and
(combined) heat and power (CHP). A framework for this is offered by biorefineries.
The successful further development of such biorefineries is an exciting area of
multidisciplinary science integration. Knowledge of plant biology, chemistry, physics,
geoscience, economics, logistics and infrastructure, and engineering needs to be inte-
grated and applied in this field. New synergies between such widely differing science
fields thereby need to be elaborated and established (Aresta et al., 2012). Next to such a
development, one needs to consider or rather envision that the context will change,
such as novel technologies for transportation, new ways of logistics, changed policies,
economy, and social science boundary conditions. In order to open up the full potential
of biorefineries, further systemand technology development is needed; research, devel-
opment, and demonstration programs thereby can link industry, research institutes,
universities, governmental bodies, and nongovernmental organizations, while market
introduction strategies are required to be developed in parallel.