Combined First And Second Generation Ethanol Production: Analysis Of Supercritical Hydrolysis

Abstract

Supercritical hydrolysis has been studied for the production of lignocellulosic ethanol to overcome the high cost and long reaction time of enzymatic hydrolysis. Aspen Plus® was used to simulate ethanol and energy production at a conventional autonomous distillery processing 500 ton of sugarcane/hr and a steam based cogeneration system. Thermal integration of the autonomous distillery was conducted using the Pinch Point Method. A reduction of 32% at the bagasse consumption after thermal integration to supply the energy requirements of the autonomous distillery was observed. In Case 1, after thermal integration of first and second generation ethanol production, 43% of bagasse was designated to ethanol production. At this configuration, it was produced 88 L of ethanol/ton of sugarcane, an increase of 13% to the conventional process. In Case 2, an increase of 13% in ethanol production was observed. A different configuration of supercritical hydrolysis considering the direct hydrolysis of the material without pretreatment and co-fermentation of the C5 and C6 monomers could possibly result in higher ethanol productivity per Mw spent. This is an abstract of a paper presented at the CHISA 2012 - 20th International Congress of Chemical and Process Engineering and PRES 2012 - 15th Conference PRES (Prague, Czech Republic 8/25-29/2012).Ceska Rafinerska,DEZA,Synpo,BorsodChem,Prazska Plynarenska a.s