TRANSITIONING REGIONAL AUSTRALIA TO CIRCULAR BIOECONOMY: A CASE FOR THE LATROBE VALLEY

摘要

The linear take-make-forsake material flow model underpinned the twentieth century's unprecedented industrialization and subsequent urbanization. This model helped improve the living standards but consumed copious amounts of fossil fuels and materials that resulted in irreparable damage to the environment and climate. Now a radical shift towards circular material flow chains is needed. Here, carbon negative biorefinery is proposed as an appropriate large-scale manufacturing industry to implement circular material flows thereby facilitating the transition of a local economy to a circular bioeconomy. This biorefinery presents an innovative integration of commercial technologies that produce platform chemicals from non-food biomass as intermediaries for conversion into polymers. The carbon negative biorefinery's main product is environment friendly biodegradable plastics to replace single use plastics and for application in products like coffee cups. Coproducts are biofuels and polymers. These polymers are value-added into sustainable materials for the construction industry and hi-tech materials for the energy and electronics industries. At the end-of-life, these materials and products would be sent back to the biorefinery for recycle thus locking them in a perpetual make?break cycle as a part of the circular bioeconomy. A detailed techno-economic assessment has been carried out for the Latrobe Valley to assess the potential of a regional area's transition to a circular bioeconomy. Simulations were carried out for the biorefinery consuming 650,000 metric tons (t) of non-food biomass. Technical results show that the biorefinery produces 220,000 t of C4 and 115,000 t of C2 biochemicals for the polymers. Results also demonstrate that the biorefinery is able to generate enough energy to meet its parasitic heat and electricity demands, and recycles all of its wastewater. Economic analysis shows a CAPEX of 700 million dollars and OPEX of 200 million dollars. Sensitivity and uncertainty analyses show the biorefinery is also resilient to price fluctuations.