Application of CAPEC Lipid Property Databases in the Synthesis and Design of Biorefinery Networks

Petroleum is currently the primary raw material for the production of fuels and chemicals. Consequently, our society is highly dependent on fossil non-renewable resources. However, renewable raw materials are recently receiving increasing interest for the production of chemicals and fuels, so a new industrial system based on biomass, an inexpensive, abundant and renewable raw material, is being established with sustainability as the main driving force [1].

The processing facilities for the production of multiple products (including biofuels and chemicals) from biomass are referred as biorefineries [2]. The wide variety and complex nature of components in biorefineries poses a challenge with respect to the synthesis and design of these types of processes.

Whereas physical and thermodynamic property data or models for petroleum-based processes are widely available, most data and models for biobased processes are not. Lipids are present in biorefinery processes: they represent feedstock (vegetable oil, waste cooking oil, microalgal oil), intermediate products (fatty acids, glycerol) and final products in biorefineries, thus the prediction of their properties is of relevance for the synthesis and design of biorefinery networks.

The objective of this work is to show the application of databases of physical and thermodynamic properties of lipid components to the synthesis and design of biorefinery networks.