The first step in any sustainability assessment for biorefinery technologies is strategy setting or biorefinery design through which the design alternatives can be defined to be assessed later in terms of their sustainability performance. Depending on the context (greenfield or retrofit biorefinery), the methodology for biorefinery design would be different. As mentioned before in greenfield agricultural-based biorefinery, stakeholders have a pre-defined product strategy and their objective is to achieve a competitive advantage by penetrating to the green market, and consequently increase their market share. However in retrofit forestry-based biorefinery as a pre- defined infrastructure context, the objective of stakeholders is staying competitive in the market by diversifying product portfolio thanks to the biorefinery. Taking this fact into account, the methodology of strategy setting in these contexts is explained through the following sections.
3.2.1.1 Design alternatives definition in greenfield vs. retrofit biorefinery
The first step of strategy setting in greenfield agricultural-based biorefinery context is product (commodity or added value product) selection. In order to identify production rate of the selected product, market analysis is done by which the demand for the defined product and its feasible production capacity is investigated. Then the technologies (process options) by which the defined product can be produced at the targeted capacity are identified (technology selection). Considering this information, and taking into account the biomass availability, product-process combinations are defined as design alternatives to be further analyzed later in terms of sustainability performance.On the other side, forest products companies have some competitive advantages including the established infrastructure, a good access to biomass, engineering know-how, and established supply chain for biomass and product (Mansoornejad, Chambost et al. 2010). These companies would like to identify the most promising biorefinery strategies for being integrated into their existing facilities by which they can diversify their product portfolio using the available biomass around the mill. Thus the availability of biomass and characteristics of the host mill dictate biorefinery technologies that can be selected to be further analyzed. For instance, when the minimum feasible capacity of a biorefinery technology is about 1000 bdmt/day biomass, if the maximum available biomass at the mill would be less than this amount, this technology should
not be selected as a candidate technology for that specific mill. In addition, for example if the mill is very far from the market (characteristic of the mill), the technologies that produce large volume of commodity products are not appropriate to be considered as the candidate options in the context of that specific mill due to the difficulty of transferring large volume products to the far away market.
Thus considering characteristics of the mill and availability of biomass (type and capacity), some process technologies are selected as the design alternatives. On these candidate technologies, phased approach and also retrofit design are applied which each is explained through the following sections.
3.2.1.2 Phased approach
After targeting some biorefinery technologies, in order to mitigate technology and market risks associated with their implementation, a phased approach is applied to each design alternative. Three suggested biorefinery implementation phases introduced by Chambost et al. (Chambost, McNutt et al. 2008) include Phase I for lowering operating cost, Phase II for increasing revenue and Phase III to improve margin (Figure 3-3).
Figure 3-3 Strategic implementation of the biorefinery by a forest products company (Chambost, McNutt et al. 2008)
In this study for each biorefinery technology, Phase I represents minimum market risk for the core business transformation, whereas Phase II which involves the technology that when implemented, typically results in manufacturing of value-added products ending with higher revenue but along with a higher risk. These phases are designed based on (1) targeting different
end products from one specific product stream and (2) implementing all associated processes to convert that stream into the targeted value-added products.
In this study it is assumed that Phase I would be constructed within two years and will be in production for about five years in order to set the ground for Phase II implementation. In the sixth year of production while Phase I is still running, Phase II will start to be constructed in a year and then from seventh year of production, biorefinery would get ready to be completely switched to Phase II strategy.
3.2.1.3 Retrofit design
In order to quantify the potential synergies between the biorefinery process and pulp production line at the mill, and to maximize the benefits of transformation strategy, unique characteristics of the mill and all integration potentials should be identified first. This is done through a retrofit design. The integration potentials can be categorized in three groups including the integration potentials in process, biomass and product sectors.
Integration Potentials in Process Sector
The first integration potential at process sector can be using leftovers, e.g rejected oversize chips, at the mill in biorefinery process. Other potential integrations can be process units that have a capability to be integrated into the biorefinery process which mainly include (1) boilers and turbines at the energy island (energy integration), (2) waste water treatment (WWT) facilities, (3) landfill area for solid wastes disposal (4) unused existing equipments, and (5) Warehouse and buildings.
In order to evaluate energy integration potentials, the existing energy island at the mill needs to be characterized and the energy sinks and sources should be identified by energy balance of the mill. This will show whether the studied mill is energy demanding or it has any type of excess steam or electricity that can be used in the biorefinery plant. The next step would be identification of the types and working capacities of the boilers and turbines currently available at the energy island. This would help analyzer to identify how much of needed energy in biorefinery process can be supplied by the existing facilities at the energy island and consequently how much incremental fuel would be needed to produce total estimated energy
consumed by biorefinery process. In a case that existing nominal capacities of the boilers and turbines would be adequate to supply energy demand of the both biorefinery and pulp process, just the cost of excess fuel that is fed to the boilers will be addressed in economic analysis. Whereas cases in which new boilers are required to support high energy demand of biorefinery process, for which the cost of additional fuels and also cost of new boilers should be addressed in techno-economic model.
Another process-oriented integration potential is treating liquid wastes of biorefinery process using the existing WWT facilities at the mill. In order to evaluate this potential, two specifications of the WWT unit need to be investigated including current Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD) content and hydraulic loading of the wastes. Subtraction of the current BOD content and hydraulic loading at the mill, from the maximum capacity of them that can be handled by WWT, would result in identifying how much of liquid wastes in biorefinery process can be treated by the existing WWT at the mill. If all wastes can be treated by the existing WWT, the associated cost of excess power consumption due to using more aerators because of need to additional oxygen as a result of higher BOD load, would be the only incremental cost that should be addressed in economic analysis. Otherwise cost of a new WWT system should be applied in economic analysis. Moreover, the composition of liquid wastes of biorefinery process should be determined in order to estimate possible additional costs associated with treating them. As an example, when liquid wastes contain any type of acids, the cost of acid neutralization should be addressed in economic analysis as well. Besides all liquid wastes, biorefinery process may have some solid wastes. Sometimes landfill area at the mill would have enough capacity to handle these solid wastes, otherwise they should be sent to the landfill of any facilities close to the mill or should be transferred to the city landfill. In each of these cases, the associated cost for landfilling should be seen as incremental cost in economic analysis.
Commonly there are many unused equipments at the mill that can possibly be used in biorefinery process for which the cost of bringing them back to the process should be well reflected in economic analysis.
Integration Potentials in Biomass Sector
The first question that should be answered for any type of biorefinery integration is that what type of biomass, at what extent and at which price can be potentially supplied by the forest lands
around the mill (in specific radius) to be fed into the biorefinery process. In order to estimate the available biomass, potential future demand of the other mills in the studied area should be taken into account. In estimation of the delivered biomass price, biomass purchased cost, load and transportation cost and also stumpage cost should be considered to develop a cost model for the supplied biomass.
Another potential integration on biomass side is about cost synergies in material handling systems. In the case of using different biomass species for biorefinery process compared to pulp
production line, a new material handling system should be considered due to the risk of biomass
contamination. However even in that case, still there would be some synergies between the two material handling systems, such as using the existing scales and dumpers that result in considerable cost saving. Identification of these synergies would help the analyzer to estimate the incremental cost of the additional facilities.
Integration Potentials in Product Sector
One of important potential synergies between the mill and biorefinery process is on product side which would be mainly product portfolio diversification and supply chain synergy. The potential benefits of margin creation and revenue stabilization associated with diversifying product portfolio should be addressed by adding the revenue from biorefinery products to the list of existing products at the mill. It would be better if the economic analysis can cover all the associated costs from the received biomass at the mill gate to delivered products to the customers. However this would need detailed evaluation of supply chain opportunities which are usually assessed not in strategic level of deign but later in tactical and practical level. Supply chain design of integrated forest biorefinery has been well addressed in literature through several studies (Mansoornejad, Chambost et al. 2010; Dansereau, El-Halwagi et al. 2012; Mansoornejad, Pistikopoulos et al. 2013), however it is beyond the scope of this study. Considering this fact, the economic analysis in this study covers all the costs associated with business transformation from the delivered biomass at the mill gate to the final products excluding transporting them to the targeted markets.
The selected biorefinery technologies considering the identified integration potentials associated with each, are assessed in terms of sustainability through following sections.