(195g) TEA/LCA of Integrated Biochemical and Hydrothermal Processing of Corn Stover for Fuels and High Value Products

Globally, corn crop production is more than 1 bty, which generates significant amount of corn stover that comprised of leaves, stalks, and cobs of corn. An integrated processing approach comprised of biochemical and hydrothermal technologies is developed to minimize waste production and achieve production of both solid and liquid side products, which the viewpoint of offsetting the fuel cost. Corn bales were processed at the Biomass Feedstock National User Facility (BFNUF) and the obtained pulverized corn stover (low and high ash content) were pretreated to obtain unhydrolyzed solids (UHS). Hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) of UHS was performed to achieve production of hydrochar, phenols and lactic acid. Hydrochar was further valorized into porous carbon, which was used for the energy storage application. Process engineering calculation and scale-up was performed for 1 tpd feedstock throughput. Technoeconomic analysis (TEA) and life-cycle analysis (LCA) were performed considering optimized integrated processing. Production rate of high value-added products such as char, phenols and carboxylic acids was included in the process economics calculations. ASPEN modeling was performed to scale-up the process to achieve fuel cost <$2/gge.