Publication

Exergy and exergoeconomic analyses of sustainable furfural production via reactive distillation

François Maréchal
2021
Journal Articles

Abstract

Lignocellulosic biomass is a potential renewable resource for production of high-value, sustainable products. Furfural is among the important bio-based chemicals in biorefineries. However, the conventional process of furfural production using a reaction-separation network entails low product yield but high fixed and operating costs owing to the complex process of separation. In this study, a process of furfural production via reactive distillation (RD) was investigated and designed based on the concept of process intensification. Exergy and exergoeconomic analyses were applied to evaluate the process performance. When the RD column was operated at its optimal configuration, furfural production of 81.78 kg h(-1) was achieved with xylose conversion and furfural yield of 97.9% and 97.4%, respectively. The exergy efficiency of furfural production was 56.41%, while the RD column exhibited the maximum exergy destruction rate among all components with an exergy efficiency of 69.82%. The exergy destruction rate declined with decrease in the reboiler duty of the RD column and increase in xylose concentration. The exergoeconomic analysis revealed that decreasing the reboiler duty had the highest impact on the total cost of furfural production. Decreases in feedstock and catalyst costs as well as interest rate additionally lowered the total cost rate of the system. (C) 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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https://infoscience.epfl.ch/entities/publication/0dcf136c-f939-4b20-9968-e167adfb1df0

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François Maréchal
2021
Journal Articles

Abstract

Official source

https://infoscience.epfl.ch/entities/publication/0dcf136c-f939-4b20-9968-e167adfb1df0

About this result

Related concepts (32)

Total cost

In economics, total cost (TC) is the minimum dollar cost of producing some quantity of output. This is the total economic cost of production and is made up of variable cost, which varies according to the quantity of a good produced and includes inputs such as labor and raw materials, plus fixed cost, which is independent of the quantity of a good produced and includes inputs that cannot be varied in the short term such as buildings and machinery, including possibly sunk costs.

Marginal cost

In economics, the marginal cost is the change in the total cost that arises when the quantity produced is incremented, the cost of producing additional quantity. In some contexts, it refers to an increment of one unit of output, and in others it refers to the rate of change of total cost as output is increased by an infinitesimal amount. As Figure 1 shows, the marginal cost is measured in dollars per unit, whereas total cost is in dollars, and the marginal cost is the slope of the total cost, the rate at which it increases with output.

Variable cost

Variable costs are costs that change as the quantity of the good or service that a business produces changes. Variable costs are the sum of marginal costs over all units produced. They can also be considered normal costs. Fixed costs and variable costs make up the two components of total cost. Direct costs are costs that can easily be associated with a particular cost object. However, not all variable costs are direct costs. For example, variable manufacturing overhead costs are variable costs that are indirect costs, not direct costs.

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