Design and techno-economic evaluation of microbial oil production as a renewable resource for biodiesel and oleochemical production

Koutinas, A. A., Chatzifragkou, A. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9255-7871, Kopsahelis, N., Papanikolaou, S. and Kookos, I. K. (2014) Design and techno-economic evaluation of microbial oil production as a renewable resource for biodiesel and oleochemical production. Fuel, 116. pp. 566-577. ISSN 0016-2361 doi: 10.1016/j.fuel.2013.08.045

Abstract/Summary

Experimental results from the open literature have been employed for the design and techno-economic evaluation of four process flowsheets for the production of microbial oil or biodiesel. The fermentation of glucose-based media using the yeast strain Rhodosporidium toruloides has been considered. Biodiesel production was based on the exploitation of either direct transesterification (without extraction of lipids from microbial biomass) or indirect transesterifaction of extracted microbial oil. When glucose-based renewable resources are used as carbon source for an annual production capacity of 10,000 t microbial oil and zero cost of glucose (assuming development of integrated biorefineries in existing industries utilising waste or by-product streams) the estimated unitary cost of purified microbial oil is $3.4/kg. Biodiesel production via indirect transesterification of extracted microbial oil proved more cost-competitive process compared to the direct conversion of dried yeast cells. For a price of glucose of $400/t oil production cost and biodiesel production cost are estimated to be $5.5/kg oil and $5.9/kg biodiesel, correspondingly. Industrial implementation of microbial oil production from oleaginous yeast is strongly dependent on the feedstock used and on the fermentation stage where significantly higher productivities and final microbial oil concentrations should be achieved.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/55051
Item Type	Article
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Life Sciences > School of Chemistry, Food and Pharmacy > Department of Food and Nutritional Sciences > Food Research Group
Publisher	Elsevier
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