Novel process for producing levulinic acid, electricity, and heat from municipal solid waste and agricultural waste: Performance analysis and optimization

Shuyuan Zhao, Heng Chen, Lanxin Fan, Haoran Zhou, Zhan Liu, Huixun Liang and Yinan Wang

Energy, 2025, vol. 336, issue C

Abstract: To address waste valorization and produce high-purity levulinic acid (LA), an integrated system for the conversion of municipal solid waste (MSW) and agricultural waste is proposed. The system is established between the MSW incineration plant and the biorefinery system, harnessing waste heat to maximize cascaded energy utilization and achieving high recovery rates of LA (97.28 %), electricity, and heat. Besides, the mass balance, thermodynamic and economic performance of the system are investigated. Findings indicate that the system can obtain LA with 99.80 % purity and self-sustain its total energy consumption. The total energy efficiency and exergy efficiency for the whole process reach 67.07 % and 59.12 %. The system exhibits environmental advantages: it realizes a carbon efficiency of 82.81 % by cascading waste heat. Overall, the system will achieve payback of the initial investment in 4.26 years, and the proposal is projected to have a net present value (NPV) of 153309.96 k$ over its 30-year lifespan. Moreover, the multi-objective optimization based on NSGA-II reveals that the optimized energy efficiency and exergy efficiency can be enhanced by 2.71 % and 2.61 %, respectively, with an agricultural waste mass flow rate of 4.5 kg/s.

Keywords: Levulinic acid producing; Waste-to-energy; Incineration; System integration; Performance assessment; Multi; Objective optimization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:energy:v:336:y:2025:i:c:s0360544225040988

DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2025.138456

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