From Cardoon Lignocellulosic Biomass to Bio-1,4 Butanediol: An Integrated Biorefinery Model

Biorefineries are novel, productive models that are aimed at producing biobased alternatives to many fossil-based products. Biomass supply and overall energy consumptions are important issues determining the overall biorefinery sustainability. Low-profit lands appear to be a potential option for the sustainable production of raw materials without competition with the food chain. Cardoon particularly matches these characteristics, thanks to the rapid growth and the economy of the cultivation and harvesting steps. An integrated biorefinery processing 60 kton/y cardoon lignocellulosic biomass for the production of 1,4-butanediol (bio-BDO) is presented and discussed in this work. After designing the biorefinery flowsheet, the mass and energy balances were calculated. The results indicated that the energy recovery system has been designed to almost completely cover the entire energy requirement of the BDO production process. Despite the lower supply of electricity, the energy recovery system can cover around 78% of the total electricity demand. Instead, the thermal energy recovery system was able to satisfy the overall demand of the sugar production process entirely, while BDO purification columns require high-pressure steam. The thermal energy recovery system can cover around 83% of the total thermal demand. Finally, a cradle-to-gate simplified environmental assessment was conducted in order to evaluate the environmental impact of the process in terms of carbon footprint. The carbon footprint value calculated for the entire production process of BDO was 2.82 kg(CO2eq)/kg(BDO). The cultivation phase accounted for 1.94 kg(CO2eq)/kg(BDO), the transport had very little impact, only for 0.067 kg(CO2eq)/kg(BDO), while the biorefinery phase contributes for 0.813 kg(CO2eq)/kg(BDO).