Simultaneous design of integrated cyanobacteriabased biorefinery and its heat exchanger network

MATIAS RAMOS; ROMINA LASRY TESTA; FERNANDO D. RAMOS; VANINA ESTRADA; M. SOLEDAD DIAZ

Computer Aided Chemical Engineering

Elsevier

Lugar: Amsterdam; Año: 2023 p. 2073 - 2078

1570-7946

In this work we propose a mixed integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) model for theoptimal design of an integrated cyanobacteria-based biorefinery and its heat exchangernetwork (HEN), considering alternative in-vivo and in-silico Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803strains, designed in our previous work. The objective is to potentially produce pigments,biopolymers, bioethanol, biogas and biofertilizers. The production process includesdifferent alternatives embedded within a superstructure. To assess the feasibility of thebiorefinery, we considered the Sustainability Profit (SP), a monetary-based sustainabilitymetric as the objective function. The Net Present Value (NPV) was also calculated. Bothindexes give positive values and numerical results provides useful insights on advancedbiofuels production with metabolic engineered cyanobacteria. Comparison withsuboptimal solutions using in-vivo strains is also provided.