Issue |
MATEC Web Conf.
Volume 268, 2019
The 25th Regional Symposium on Chemical Engineering (RSCE 2018)
|
|
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Article Number | 06018 | |
Number of page(s) | 6 | |
Section | Process for Energy and Environment | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/matecconf/201926806018 | |
Published online | 20 February 2019 |
Sustainability assessment of xylitol production from empty fruit bunch
Department of Chemical Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Petronas, Bandar Seri Iskandar, Perak, 32610, Malaysia
Corresponding author: zulfan.adiputra@utp.edu.my
Empty fruit bunch (EFB), one of the wastes from palm oil production, can be utilized into fuels and chemicals. The aim of this paper is to find the optimum capacity to produce xylitol from EFB. The optimum capacity was found by simultaneously considering its profitability, hazard potential and environmental performances. The process was developed and simulated using Aspen Plus to analyze its technical challenges and economic performances, covering net present values, internal rate of returns and payback period. On the other hand, hazard identification and ranking (HIRA) was used to evaluate its safety performances, while Simapro V.8.5.2 was used to assess the environmental impact via a life cycle assessment (LCA). The results show that the high consumption of steam in chemical hydrogenation causes the main contribution of Global warming potential (GWP) by 62%. This acid pre-treatment is also considered the most toxic part of the process while the hydrogenation of xylitol is the most hazardous part based on fire and explosion perspectives. Then, multi-objective optimization using Genetic Algorithm (GA) was performed in Matlab to find the optimum capacity. The methodology and result of this work lay the foundation of future works in utilizing.
© The Authors, published by EDP Sciences, 2019
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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