Process integration in a biorefinery scheme

There is currently an effort to achieve economic feasibility of using lignocellulosic biomass as a new source of sugars for ethanol production. The infeasibility of these processes is mainly due to the cost of enzymes and no use of co-products that are generated in the pretreatment of biomass. The technical, economic and environmental assessment of different biorefinery schemes is complicated by the uncertainty in areas such as raw material to be used, the prices of energy and the end product, investment costs, operation and risks of new technologies. In this paper, the guidelines show how process integration and assessment of co-products in the biorefinery scheme leads to the feasibility of the processes that use biomass for biofuels are given. A scheme of integrated processes that exchange materials and energy resources is displayed, the scheme refers to the cane industry sugar generated as major products juice, bagasse and molasse and other products derived processes in annexes found among torula, biogas, CO2, furfural, lignin, and electricity.