Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Artigo Produção Nacional Revisado por pares

BIBTEX RIS

Evaluation of economic feasibility under uncertainty of a thermochemical route for ethanol production in Brazil

2018; Elsevier BV; Volume: 150; Linguagem: Inglês

10.1016/j.energy.2018.02.118

1873-6785

Reynaldo L.N. Taylor-de-Lima, Arthur José Gerbasi da Silva, Luiz Fernando Loureiro Legey, Alexandre Szklo,

Sustainable Supply Chain Management

This paper assesses the economic feasibility of ethanol and higher alcohols production through a thermochemical route in Brazil. This route comprises mainly sugarcane bagasse gasification, syngas cleaning, and synthesis of alcohols. Ethanol production costs and associated risks are evaluated in different scenarios. A case study of a virtual plant to be located adjacent to a sugarcane mill, in the state of São Paulo, is presented with the objective of finding the minimum ethanol selling price (MESP) that makes the plant's project economically feasible. The analysis utilizes first the traditional discounted cash flow method and then proceeds to use a stochastic approach, which is more suitable to study economic feasibility under uncertainty conditions. In the latter approach, prices of raw materials and products are modelled through a mean reverting stochastic process, and economic feasibility is analysed with the help of Monte Carlo simulations. Results are summarized via a histogram of the MESPs obtained for different simulated price scenarios. Finally, the project's risk is evaluated by computing the number of instances in which the MESP is greater than the ethanol market price.