Potentials for ethanol production from rice straw in Vietnam

The research described in this book was originated from interest about the potentials for the implementation of industrial ethanol production from rice straw in Vietnam. To understand the potential for practical production of a product, besides the mature technologies required, other concerns such as biomass cost, plant capacity, and above all, assumed ethanol PCs should be addressed. Techno-economic analysis is one of vital tools to determine the economics through production cost and cost contribution. In this research, such kind of study for the case of Vietnam was completely conducted from investigating the rice straw available for sustainable production of ethanol, density, farm-plant's gate cost, and the optimal facility size for minimizing ethanol production cost to techno-economic analysis. This study is an unprecedented attempt in previous studies in developing countries where technical data from demonstration-scale production process have not yet been available and even rare in the developed nations. The idea of developing the equation for calculation of optimal facility size is unique and applicable for any bio-renewable energy project.