Developments in chemical engineering, particularly in the area of process synthesis have been dominated by phenomena in petrochemical industries. This study demonstrated that the special characteristics of biomass, different from petroleum would lead to new approaches in biorefinery synthesis. Four key challenges were identified, namely raw material(s) selection, products selection, process integration and equipment selection, of which the first three were addressed. Several metrics for measuring mass and energy values were suggested for comparison of different potential raw material(s) and products quantitatively. In addition, material and material & process mapping were introduced to summarise raw material, product and process alternatives. The Evolutionary Optimisation method was also proposed in order to find biorefinery configuration. It included superstructure generation by considering predicted heuristics.
\nModifications of the corn to ethanol dry-grind process were used to demonstrate the proposed method and tools. The predicted heuristic specified separating high value components (oil and fibres) before they are converted into lower value derivatives (Distiller\u2019s Dried Grains and Solubles). The suggestions based on the proposed metrics were in accordance with those based on simulation results.<\/p>\n