Experimental Investigation, Techno-Economic Analysis and Environmental Impact of Bioethanol Production from Banana Stem

Nazia Hossain, Alyaa Nabihah Razali, Teuku Meurah Indra Mahlia, Tamal Chowdhury, Hemal Chowdhury, Hwai Chyuan Ong, Abd Halim Shamsuddin and Arridina Susan Silitonga
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Nazia Hossain: Department of Civil and Infrastructure Engineering, School of Engineering, RMIT University, Melbourne, VIC 3001, Australia
Alyaa Nabihah Razali: Institute of Sustainable Energy, Universiti Tenaga Nasional, Selangor 43000, Malaysia
Teuku Meurah Indra Mahlia: School of Information, Systems and Modeling, Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology, University of Technology Sydney, Sydney, NSW 2007, Australia
Tamal Chowdhury: Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Chittagong University of Engineering and Technology, Chittagong 4349, Bangladesh
Hemal Chowdhury: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Chittagong University of Engineering and Technology, Chittagong 4349, Bangladesh
Hwai Chyuan Ong: School of Information, Systems and Modeling, Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology, University of Technology Sydney, Sydney, NSW 2007, Australia
Abd Halim Shamsuddin: Institute of Sustainable Energy, Universiti Tenaga Nasional, Selangor 43000, Malaysia
Arridina Susan Silitonga: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Politeknik Negeri Medan, Medan 20155, Indonesia

Energies, 2019, vol. 12, issue 20, 1-16

Abstract: Banana stem is being considered as the second largest waste biomass in Malaysia. Therefore, the environmental challenge of managing this huge amount of biomass as well as converting the feedstock into value-added products has spurred the demand for diversified applications to be implemented as a realistic approach. In this study, banana stem waste was experimented for bioethanol generation via hydrolysis and fermentation methods with the presence of Saccharomyces cerevisiae (yeast) subsequently. Along with the experimental analysis, a realistic pilot scale application of electricity generation from the bioethanol has been designed by HOMER software to demonstrate techno-economic and environmental impact. During sulfuric acid and enzymatic hydrolysis, the highest glucose yield was 5.614 and 40.61 g/L, respectively. During fermentation, the maximum and minimum glucose yield was 62.23 g/L at 12 h and 0.69 g/L at 72 h, respectively. Subsequently, 99.8% pure bioethanol was recovered by a distillation process. Plant modeling simulated operating costs 65,980 US$/y, net production cost 869347 US$ and electricity cost 0.392 US$/kWh. The CO 2 emission from bioethanol was 97,161 kg/y and SO 2 emission was 513 kg/y which is much lower than diesel emission. The overall bioethanol production from banana stem and application of electricity generation presented the approach economically favorable and environmentally benign.

Keywords: acid hydrolysis; banana stem; bioethanol production; environmental analysis; enzymatic hydrolysis; HOMER software; techno-economics; yeast fermentation (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: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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