Assessment for industrial production of poplar ethanol after analysis of influencing factors and predicted yield

Poplar is an ideal feedstock for the production of biomass ethanol. For this reason, this study aimed to predict and optimize the bioethanol yield from poplar through the construction of an ANN-RSM (Artificial Neural Network-Response Surface Methodology) model. Following this, a techno-economic analysis was conducted after simulating industrial ethanol production using the optimal fermentation process parameters identified through the optimization. The optimal combination of process parameters was finally determined as follows: cellulase load of 21.23 FPU/g, pH of 5.51, yeast load of 3.39 g/L, and substrate load of 14.01%. Under these conditions, the experimental value of ethanol yield was 76.70%, which was in close agreement with the predicted optimal ethanol yield of 76.01%. Based on the above optimization results, the lignocellulosic ethanol industrial production process was constructed using the Aspen Plus platform. Through techno-economic analysis, it was found that for a plant with an annual processing capacity of 114,000 tonnes of the adiabatic poplar, the annual ethanol yield under NaOH-ethanol pretreatment in combination with the optimal fermentation process parameters was 0.15 t/t (adiabatic poplar). The Total Capital Investment (TCI) was 22.08 MMUSDs, and the minimum ethanol selling price (MESP) was estimated to be 1,094.59 USDs/tonne. This work provides significant theoretical and technical references for the industrial development of lignocellulosic ethanol.