Process simulation design and techno-economic analysis of production technology of glycerol dehydrogenase

Glycerol dehydrogenase(GDH)is one of the key enzymes for production of dihydroxyacetone(DHA)and 1,3-propanediol(PDO)by the enzymatic method.Based on scale-up of laboratory experiment,the Superpro Designer emluator was used to design and simulate the whole process of industrial technology for GDH production,by coupling with costing and economic evaluation of flowsheeting.Simulation results indicated that the process design was reasonable with main process data in agreement with experimental results.The economic analysis showed that raw materials and supplies shared the larger proportion of operating cost reaching 16% and 60% respectively.The expected return on investment(ROI)was to reach 50.48% of approximately 75.36 million CNY project total investments of a 17.9 t·a-1 plant,as the after-tax profits about 21.08 million CNY·a-1.