Synthesis and Optimization of Sago-Based Biochemical Value Chain

摘要

Sago palm is one of the main food crops in South-East Asia as it contains the sago starch that can be manufactured into food products (e.g. noodles, biscuits, etc.) and biofuels (e.g. bioethanol, etc.). Sago starch is produced via sago starch extraction process (SSEP) while wastes such as sago barks (SB), sago fibres (SF) and sago wastewater (SW) are produced from the SSEP. As the demand for sago starch increased over the recent years, the waste management of the sago wastes has gained more attention. From several studies, it was found that conversion of sago wastes into value-added products are feasible. A mathematical model was also developed to help the sago mill owners to determine the pathways with maximum overall profit and minimum overall carbon footprint (CFP) to convert the sago wastes into value-added products. However, the research did not take the intermediates such as xylose and mannose into consideration but these intermediates can be also converted into value-added products (e.g. xylitol and mannitol). Since there are more technologies and value-added products to be considered, the study was extended to develop an optimum biochemical value chain based on sago wastes with maximum overall profit and minimum overall carbon footprint (CFP). Since the optimization objectives (maximum overall profit and minimum overall CFP) are conflicting with each other, the concept of fuzzy optimization has been adopted in this work. This mathematical modelling was developed using a commercial optimization software, LINGO 18.0. The developed model was then illustrated and validated by solving a case study to determine the sago wastes conversion pathway with optimum overall profit and overall carbon footprint (CFP). This developed model can act as a decisionmaking tool for the sago mill owners to decide the sago wastes treatment pathways based on the economic and environmental performance.