Abstract
Recognizing the importance of succinic acid as one of the most relevant platform molecules, the present study assesses the production of succinic acid from waste apple slurry/pomace as a sustainable and renewable feedstock. The assessment has been undertaken by incorporating technical and economic considerations in the analysis while also comparing two succinic acid production scenarios. The aforementioned considerations have been applied by utilizing process simulation results, generated from Aspen Plus software, as input data to undertake economic assessments using classic economic correlations. Employing well-defined system boundaries, scenarios to produce bio-succinic acid with either bioelectricity (scenario 1) or biogas (scenario 2) as co-products were therefore comparatively accessed. This study was able to demonstrate that waste pomace as a feedstock has the potential to generate low-cost succinic acid, while scenario 2 constituted the preferred pathway overall. This study results may provide valuable information to policy makers, to enable better decisions regarding the viability, design and execution of large-scale bio-succinic acid production projects based on waste apple pomace as the preferred feedstock.
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Acknowledgements
Oseweuba also gratefully acknowledges the financial support of Wallonia-Brussels International via the Wallonie-Bruxelles International (WBI) excellence Postdoctoral fellowship.
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Oseweuba Valentine Okoro contributed to conceptualization, model development and simulation, and draft preparation. Amin Shavndi contributed to draft preparation and manuscript editing.
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Okoro, O.V., Shavandi, A. An assessment of the utilization of waste apple slurry in bio-succinic acid and bioenergy production. Int. J. Environ. Sci. Technol. 19, 1323–1334 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13762-021-03235-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13762-021-03235-z