Economics of Climate Change:a Sensitivity Analysis Study Applied to Integrated First-and Second-Generation Ethanol Biorefinery

摘要

According to the Brazilian federal program called Renovabio,biofuels producers will earn a number of carbon credits,known as CBios,proportionally to the reduction of greenhouse gases emissions.These CBios will be sold by biorefineries to fuel distributors in Brazil.Thus,the environmental performance will have a direct impact on the economic profitability of the biorefinery.In this work we compared the sensitivity of the overall economic performance for ten key parameters of the second generation ethanol process,considering the current conditions and future scenarios with additional incomes of CBios selling.The most influent parameters for all scenarios were hydrolysed bagasse fraction,enzyme loading and pre-treatment solid fraction.The relative relevance of parameters does not change when considered the CBios selling incomes,but the absolute relevance of the hydrolysed bagasse fraction decreases significantly,especially for the optimist CBios price.The residence times of hydrolysis,pre-treatment and fermentation,and the xylose concentration have negligible effects for both current and future scenarios.