UC Davis

A large-scale facility was designed to analyze the techno-economics of current resveratrol manufacturing procedures to provide information for domestic production using a plant-based approach. The present model utilizes the plant Japanese knotweed as a source of resveratrol for production. All manufacturing steps and conditions were tuned to match manufacturing processes listed in publicly available literature and patents on resveratrol production. The model is designed to produce 100 metric tons of resveratrol at 98% purity. This simulated biomanufacturing facility operates for 330 days a year, 24 hours per day, performing 1,295 batches yielding 77.3 kg resveratrol per batch. This simulated manufacturing facility was designed in SuperPro Designer® allowing for initialization of bioprocessing conditions and pricing of materials and equipment utilized in the model. The analysis conducted here provided key insight into the capital expenditures (CAPEX), operating expenditures (OPEX), and Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) expected for such a process. The results from the base case model are as follows: CAPEX of $44.7 million, OPEX of $15.0 million per year, and a COGS of $150/kg resveratrol. A sensitivity and scenario analysis were conducted to assess the relationship between certain operating conditions to both the CAPEX and COGS. The implementation of additional equipment for an ethanol recovery unit was shown to reduce OPEX to about $14.1 million and COGS to $141.4//kg but increase CAPEX to $51.5 million. The simulated facility was assessed for its efficiency, and it was determined that the model has a process mass intensity (PMI) of 529 kg/kg resveratrol. The environment impact factor (EI) of the facility was also analyzed. Here, the EIs were determined to be 26 and 31.6 kg/kg resveratrol for input and outputs, respectively, suggesting a very safe and environmentally-friendly process.