SUMMARY

On the forefront of the recent expansion in biofuels research is the production of cellulosic ethanol, or ethanol produced from a cellulose containing feedstock. Cellulose is a six-carbon polysaccharide found in most plant life and is the most abundant organic compound on the planet. While the first generation of ethanol facilities uses sugar and starch based (corn kernels) plants as their feedstock, the next generation will use cellulosic sources such as wood chips, switchgrass, and forest residues. These cellulosic sources require far less energy and resources to grow and harvest and are also much more abundant. A cellulosic source widely available in Georgia and much of the southeastern US is southern pine. This study involves the modeling of a complete pine to ethanol production facility with the AspenTech software Aspen Plus. A key parameter which affects the competitiveness of this process is the internal processing energy required to convert the pine to ethanol. As a result, the heat and electrical load of every component within the facility is modeled and then quantified through the Aspen Plus simulation. After this base case energy level is developed, various alternate plant configurations are integrated in an attempt to reduce this energy value. The amount of net renewable energy generated and the amount of net life cycle carbon released to the atmosphere for the base case and each of the alternate configurations is then calculated and presented. A final metric is the simple payback period for each scenario, or how many years in energy savings it would take to payback the increased initial capital investment for scenarios which require more equipment than the base case.