Techno-Economic Modeling Group
Currently, biofuels and biochemicals derived from abundant lignocellulosic materials are not widely available, despite the numerous benefits they could bring to the economy in the form of energy security, job market expansion, and greenhouse gas abatement. The primary reason behind their absence in the current marketplace is their inability to compete economically with oil-derived products. Cognizant of this, the research community has embarked on developing various technologies to lower the production cost of biofuels. However, there remain significant economic challenges to the commercialization of large-scale, next-generation biorefineries. In response to these challenges, JBEI has constructed a technoeconomic model of a lignocellulosic biorefinery that is accessible to the biofuels community at-large. The model has been deposited online and is available for download (econ.jbei.org). We continue to develop new techno-economical tools for evaluating the potential impact of the technologies being developed at JBEI that will enable commercialization and assist in the prioritization of JBEI's research targets.
Figure 1. JBEI's model calculates the economic, environmental and energetic performance of a lignocellulosic biorefinery process and allows users to model scenarios of the most interest to them.
Objectives
- Develop a baseline lignocellulosic biorefinery as a comparison system that is open access to the biofuels research community.
- Develop material and energy balances for each significant process operation in a biorefinery.
- Conduct "scenario models" to determine the economic impact of next-generation biofuel technologies.
