Techno-economic Analysis of Bioethanol Production from Palm Oil Empty Fruit bunch

Bioethanol has become more attractive as an alternative to fossil-based fuel: a biofuel and fuel additive to gasoline. Therefore, people are interested in ethanol from a feedstock that does not compete with the food supply. Oil palm empty fruit bunch (EFB) are major biomass by-products from the palm oil industry. This study proposes commercial-scale bioethanol production from EFB of 99.5 wt.% at 10,000 L/day ethanol. This bioethanol production was formulated using the commercial simulator and divided into four stages: pre-treatment, Hydrolysis, fermentation, and purification. EFB is pretreated using hot water, hot-compressed water, and alkaline hydrogen peroxide approaches. Simultaneous Saccharification and fermentation are chosen to produce the target of ethanol. At optimum conditions, it can conclude that the ethanol production rate was 13,950 litter per day by using an empty fruit bunch of 47,208 kg per day. Finally, the economic feasibility is also evaluated under techno-economic analysis. From the economic perspective, the net present value (NPV), internal rate of return (IRR), and payback period (PBP) equate to 9.016 M USD, 15%, and seven years, respectively, based on 20 years of life and a total capital investment of 12.32 M USD. The results show that bioethanol production is profitable.