Techno-economic assessment of a process for n-butanol production from ethanol

Abstract

Increasing global demand for fossil fuels makes the development of environmentally sustainable alternatives indispensable. Over the last decade, the production of n-butanol as alternative fuel has received increasing attention. The majority of ongoing research, however, still focuses on the development of mutant strains to improve the performance of the acetone-butanol-ethanol (ABE) fermentation process. This thesis presents a patented process for the catalytic upgrading of (bio-)ethanol to n-butanol [1] via the Guerbet reaction – a promising alternative pathway for the production of n-butanol. The process is modeled and simulated in Aspen Plus™, followed by an energetic and economic assessment. Our work shows that even after heat integration, the energy consumption for the upgrading of ethanol to n-butanol is still twice as high as for state-of-the-art gasoline production processes. The economic assessment revealed that the process is competitive when butanol is sold as raw material for the chemical industry.