Algenol's Direct to Ethanol Process

Algenol's Direct to Ethanol process has been demonstrated to be technically feasible with large scale photobioreactors, but in order to assess economic viability and environmental impact, the entire system must be analyzed. Integrating technoeconomic and lifecycle analyses with the design of upstream, downstream and photobioreactor components, and evaluating a range of rational alternatives/uncertainties, represent essential steps in making the transition from the lab to commercial production. This talk will describe the key questions as they pertain to analysis of highly distributed systems such as Algenol's, and highlight the major modeling and analysis challenges.