Process development and techno‐economic analysis of bio‐based succinic acid derived from pentoses integrated to a sugarcane biorefinery

Bio‐based succinic acid is a potential building block for the production of renewable chemicals and polymers. The use of hemicellulosic hydrolyzate from sugarcane bagasse allows production of succinic acid without competing with food chains and increasing the biomass ‐aggregated value. This work assesses the economic impacts of integrating the production of ‐succinic acid on an optimized sugarcane biorefinery with the production of first‐generation ethanol and electricity. Process simulation was performed to obtain mass and energy balances of the entire process, from bagasse pre‐treatment to pentose fermentation and succinic acid recovery, using several pieces of technical information and data taken from the scientific literature. After ‐assessing the impacts of key economic variables through risk analysis, the obtained results were benchmarked against those of an optimized ethanol distillery. Calculated succinic acid production cost was US$ 2.32/kg, comparable to costs related to less expensive sugar sources. The integrated succinic acid biorefinery presented a slightly lower internal rate of return (IRR) compared to an ‐ethanol distillery. However, even when considering uncertainties, succinic acid production has a strong probability (84.6%) of achieving an IRR higher than 12%. © 2017 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd