PRELIMINARY FEASIBILITY ANALYSIS FOR AN INTEGRATED BIOMATERIALS AND ETHANOL BIOREFINERY USING WHEAT STRAW FEEDSTOCK

F. Leistritz, Donald M. Senechal, Mark D. Stowers, William F. McDonald, Chris M. Saffron and Nancy Hodur

No 23500, Agribusiness & Applied Economics Report from North Dakota State University, Department of Agribusiness and Applied Economics

Abstract: Biobased products and fuels appear to have a very bright future. A consortium led by NDSU is currently engaged in a project that would use cellulose nanofibers derived from wheat straw to make a product that could substitute for fiberglass and plastics in many applications, including automotive parts. The work described here analyzes the economic value of producing cellulose nanowhiskers (CNW) as a co-product in an ethanol biorefinery. An ASPEN Plus-based process model was developed to evaluate ethanol production from wheat straw. The base case model generated 54.418 million gallons per year (MGPY) of denatured ethanol, using approximately 900,000 tons per year of wheat straw feedstock. The capital cost was estimated at $185 million. Total operating costs, excluding by-product credits, were $92.4 million per year. Revenue from sales was estimated at $98.0 million per year from ethanol and $7.5 million per year from electricity. The earnings before interest and income tax (EBIT) are $13.1 million per year providing a return on investment (ROI) of 7.06 percent. The production cost of ethanol including by-product credit was determined at $1.56 per gallon. When production of CNW was added to the base case model, the manufacturing cost of producing CNW from wheat straw was estimated to be $.57 per pound. Economic analysis indicated that production of CNW would be an enhancement to the economic performance of a wheat straw to ethanol mill.

Keywords: Resource/Energy; Economics; and; Policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 37
Date: 2006
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/23500/files/aer590.pdf (application/pdf)

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:ags:nddaae:23500

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.23500

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Agribusiness & Applied Economics Report from North Dakota State University, Department of Agribusiness and Applied Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().