Computer-Aided Design of a Local Biorefinery Scheme from Water lily (Eichhornia Crassipes) to Produce Power and Bioproducts

Water lily (Eichhornia crassipes) has been identified as an invasive exotic plant with high proliferation in Mexico, affecting aquatic bodies, such as lakes. After extraction, the water hyacinth biomass can be used as raw material for the production of bioproducts and bioenergy, however, the majority of them not covered the region's needs, and their economic profitability decreases significantly. Also, few reports present its use as raw material inside a biorefinery scheme. In this work, we propose a local biorefinery scheme to produce power and bioproducts from water lilies, using Aspen Plus V.10.0, per the needs of the Patzcuaro Lake community in Michoac�n, Mexico. The scheme has been designed to process the harvested and sun-dried water lily from 197.6 kg/h of total wet harvested biomass, according to the extraction region schedule. The biomass is separated: root (RT) and stems-leaves (SL). The processing scheme involves the RT combustion to produce electric power, and two processes to SL; the first one, anaerobic digestion to produce fertilizer and biogas, while, pyrolysis and gasification as second one. The biogas is converted to electricity, while, the pyrolysis products are separated in bio-oil and biochar; the last one is inserted to gasification reactor to produce syngas, and then, electric power. According with results, this scheme produces 35.6 % of fertilizer, 1 % of bio-oil, and 3.5 kWh of electric power. The scheme requires energy efficiency tools to improve its energetic performance, however, is a potential solution for the use of water lily in the region.