(6ie) Development and Assessment of New Sustainable Processes for the Production of Bio-Products | AIChE

(6ie) Development and Assessment of New Sustainable Processes for the Production of Bio-Products

Authors 

Gunukula, S. - Presenter, University of Maine
Research Interests:

Research Experience:

My academic research is a blend of fields of process engineering, economics, and sustainability. My formal training was in process simulation, techno-economic analysis, economic risk assessment, and life-cycle analysis. I have worked on quantifying financial risk of investments for the development of platform technologies to produce biobased products, introducing a new methodology for the economic and environmental assessment of early stage renewable chemical technologies, and determining generalities to evaluate and guide the development of biocatalytic technologies as well as chemical catalytic pathways for the transformation of platform chemicals. As a result of these projects, I have acquired the knowledge in the areas of chemical process development, cost and benefit analysis, biofuel and biorenewable chemical production, and sustainability assessment.

Postdoctoral Projects: Economic and modeling analysis of product-and energy driven biorefineries, Assessment of the viability of platform chemical concept, Effect of biomass densification technologies on the economics of biofuel production processes, and Finding new applications of bio-char

Under supervision of M. Clayton Wheeler, William DeSisto, and Hemant Pendse, Chemical and Biological Engineering, Forest Bioproducts Research Institute, University of Maine at Orono.

PhD Dissertation: “Techniques for Evaluating and Guiding Development of Renewable Chemical Technologies for Sustainable Products”

Under supervision of Robert Anex, Biological Systems Engineering, University of Wisconsin at Madison

Research interests and Future direction:

1. Technology assessment

As faculty, I will continue working on process modeling, economic analysis, and sustainability assessment of new renewable technologies. Additionally, I will focus on incorporating social costs, policy interventions, and policy uncertainty into the techno-economic modeling for the evaluation of renewable energy and chemical technologies. I will quantify social costs of making renewable gasoline and diesel via fast pyrolysis type technologies from a wide range of feedstocks. Such quantification can facilitate comparison of renewable fuel production against the fossil fuel production in terms of total costs that include both process and social costs. Determining the difference between the total costs of making renewable fuels and fossil fuels will help making future policies that encourage the production of renewable fuels by penalizing the production of fossil fuels, if the total costs of making fossil fuels are found to be higher than that of producing renewable fuels. However, penalizing fossil fuels might increase the food prices that can lead to food insecurity. Thus, impact on food prices need to be considered along with the social costs while making policies to penalize the production of fossil fuels. I plan to get external funding for this work from USEPA and NSF- Faculty career development agencies.

2. Development of separation and purification processes

The lack of processes to purify low-value added biorenewable products from clarified fermentation broths with a larger number of low concentrated impurities such as amino acids as well as the use of energy intensive distillation or solvent extraction techniques to extract low volatile biorenewable products from dilute solutions have been limiting the commercialization of new biorenewable technologies. There is a research need for developing less energy intensive separation processes to overcome such limitations. The new separation processes must achieve desired separation efficiency as well as a high throughput. As faculty I will work on developing new less energy intensive separation techniques by focusing on the molecular properties of interested product and impurities. In near term, my focus will be on modifying bio-char for use as an adsorbent for removing minor impurities such as amino acids from a clarified fermentation broth. Additionally, I will work on finding inducers to lower pH of the clarified fermentation broths for the easy separation of organic acids. After obtaining preliminary results from laboratory experiments for bio-char modification and altering pH with inducers, I plan to get external funding for the further technology development from NIST Advanced Manufacturing Technology Consortia (AMTech) program.

3. Process research and Valorizing waste streams

The use of sulfuric acid as an acid catalyst in the production of biorenewable products from renewable feedstock creates a problem of recovering it for reuse. Neutralizing sulfuric acid with calcium salts instead of recovering it may not be a viable option for the large-scale production of biorenewable products, as the storage, handling, and transportation of tones of sulfuric acid can be hazardous. Thus, future research is necessary to provide acid environment for the production biorenewable products without the addition of an acid catalyst.

The use of an inexpensive feedstock like food waste to make bioproducts can reduce the economic barriers to commercialize the new biofuel production technologies. In this study, the potential of converting food waste to bioproudcts via combined acid hydrolysis and dehydration will be investigated. The option of replacing sulfuric acid catalyst with easily recyclable organic as well as aromatic organic acids will be studied. The results of sulfuric acid replacement will be compared against the technical and economic performance of the base case involving sulfuric acid as a catalyst. Finally, the detailed techno-economic analysis (TEA) and life cycle assessment (LCA) will be performed to assess the economic performance and environmental viability of upgrading food fraction

4. Water Food Energy Nexus

The agriculture in Arizona has begun shifting towards the production of the water-intensive alfalfa crop. This shift to alfalfa production has been associated with the growth of local dairy. The water shortage in Arizona has raised concerns with the production of a highly water intensive alfalfa crop. Replacing alfalfa as an animal feed with the algae crop can alleviate stress on water resources of Arizona. However, the production of algae must be economically competitive and environmentally sustainable to use as an animal feed. Additionally, dairy owners must be made aware of the benefits of using algae as an animal feed over alfalfa. The life cycle analysis and techno-economic studies will be performed to assess the environmental and economic sustainability of synergistic integration of algae production with wastewater treatment plants in Arizona. I plan to write proposals for NSF and USDA water food energy nexus grant. Additionally, there are grant opportunities from international agencies such as UN for the food energy water nexus research.

Refereed Journal Publications

  1. S. Gunukula, P. Keeling, R. Anex, Risk advantages of platform technologies for biorenewable chemical production, Chem. Eng. Research Design. 2016, 107, pp. 24-33.
  2. S. Gunukula, R. Anex, Evaluating and guiding the development of sustainable biorenewable chemical technologies, Biochem. Eng. J. 2017, 119, pp.74-83
  3. J.L. Carrasco, S.Gunukula, A.A. Boateng, C.A. Mullen, W.J. DeSisto, M.C. Wheeler, Pyrolysis of forest residues: An approach to techno-economics for bio-fuel production, Fuel. 2017, 193, pp.477-484.
  4. S. Gunukula, R. Anex Techno-Economic Analysis of Multiple Bio-based Routes to Adipic Acid, Biofuels Bioprod. Bioref. 2017, 11 (5), pp. 897-907
  5. S. Gunukula, T. Runge, R. Anex, Assessment of biocatalytic production parameters to determine economic and environmental viability, ACS Sustainable Chem. Eng. 2017, 5 (9), pp. 8119-8126
  6. H. AlMohamadi, S. Gunukula, W.J. DeSisto, M.C. Wheeler, Formate assisted pyrolysis: An economic analysis, Biofuels Bioprod. Bioref. 2018, 12 (1), pp. 45-55.
  7. S. Gunukula, W.J. DeSisto, H. Pendse, M.C. Wheeler, Techno-Economic Analysis of Thermal Deoxygenation Based Biorefineries for the Coproduction of Fuels and Chemicals, Applied Energy, 2018, 214, pp. 16-23.
  8. S. Gunukula, W.J. DeSisto, H. Pendse, M.C. Wheeler, Heuristics to Guide the Development of Sustainable, Biomass-Derived Platform Chemical Derivatives, ACS Sustainable Chem. Eng. 2018, 6 (4), pp. 5533-5539.
  1. Dalvand, J. Rubin, S. Gunukula, M.C. Wheeler, G. Hunt, Economics of Biofuels: Market Potential of Furfural and its Derivatives, Biomass and Bioenergy. 2018, 115, pp. 56-63.

Invited Talks

  1. Gunukula, S., Tools to Evaluate and Guide the Sustainable Production of Renewable Fuels and Chemicals for RAS. US Army Research Lab, 2018 (January 5th)
  2. Gunukula, S., Evaluating and Guiding the Development of Biorefinery Technologies, Distinguished Lecture Series, University of Maine, 2018 (February 16th)
  3. Gunukula, S., Energy and Sustainability, Arizona State University, 2018 (April 5th)

Awards and Grants

  1. Determining the different reaction engineering factors that affect the economic feasibility of the production of alpha olefins from carboxylic acids through techno-economic analysis. CBiRC Student-led Research Grant, Iowa State University, 2012.
  2. US Army Research Lab Fellowship to work on the development of in-fuel generation systems, 2018
  3. Valorizing Food Waste to Energy Dense Liquid Fuel and Bioproducts, Topic 4 of DE‐FOA‐0001916, Department of Energy, 2018 (Pending)

Teaching Interests:

I worked as a teaching assistant during my PhD study. I have given a couple of lectures and helped in building the course material for Quantitative Techniques for Biological Systems and Bioprocessing Unit Operations classes. As faculty I would like to help students to develop their creative abilities, critical thinking and communication skills, and understanding ethics and rationality within sciences. I will try to propel students into new fields of learning and promotes interdisciplinary understanding. I mentored a couple of undergraduate students and currently co-supervising a couple of graduate students.