Energy and Economic Analysis of Date Palm Biomass Feedstock for Biofuel Production in UAE: Pyrolysis, Gasification and Fermentation

Remston Martis, Amani Al-Othman, Muhammad Tawalbeh and Malek Alkasrawi
Additional contact information
Remston Martis: Department of Chemical Engineering, American University of Sharjah, Sharjah P.O. Box 26666, UAE
Amani Al-Othman: Department of Chemical Engineering, American University of Sharjah, Sharjah P.O. Box 26666, UAE
Muhammad Tawalbeh: Sustainable and Renewable Energy Engineering Department, University of Sharjah, Sharjah P.O. Box 27272, UAE
Malek Alkasrawi: Department of PS & Chemical Engineering, University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point, WI 54481, USA

Energies, 2020, vol. 13, issue 22, 1-34

Abstract: This work evaluates date palm waste as a cheap and available biomass feedstock in UAE for the production of biofuels. The thermochemical and biochemical routes including pyrolysis, gasification, and fermentation were investigated. Simulations were done to produce biofuels from biomass via Aspen Plus v.10. The simulation results showed that for a tonne of biomass feed, gasification produced 56 kg of hydrogen and fermentation yielded 233 kg of ethanol. Process energy requirements, however, proved to offset the bioethanol product value. For 1 tonne of biomass feed, the net duty for pyrolysis was 37 kJ, for gasification was 725 kJ, and for fermentation was 7481.5 kJ. Furthermore, for 1 tonne of date palm waste feed, pyrolysis generated a returned USD $768, gasification generated USD 166, but fermentation required an expenditure of USD 763, rendering it unfeasible. The fermentation economic analysis showed that reducing the system’s net duty to 6500 kJ/tonne biomass and converting 30% hemicellulose along with the cellulose content will result in a breakeven bioethanol fuel price of 1.85 USD/L. This fuel price falls within the acceptable 0.8–2.4 USD/L commercial feasibility range and is competitive with bioethanol produced in other processes. The economic analysis indicated that pyrolysis and gasification are economically more feasible than fermentation. To maximize profits, the wasted hemicellulose and lignin from fermentation are proposed to be used in thermochemical processes for further fuel production.

Keywords: energy integration; pyrolysis; gasification; fermentation; biomass; biofuels; process simulation; Aspen Plus (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/13/22/5877/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/13/22/5877/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jeners:v:13:y:2020:i:22:p:5877-:d:443064

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().