Tuesday, April 20, 2010
LL Conference Facility (Hilton Clearwater Beach)
Sugarcaner bagasse (SCB) and Coffee cut-stems (CCS) represent promising candidates for fuel ethanol production in tropical Countries because of their high availability and higher biomass yield per hectare. In this work these raw materials were pretreated with dilute sulfuric acid and liquid hot water for increasing their cellulose digestibility. In addition, the total fuel ethanol production process was simulated and economically evaluated using Aspen Plus and Aspen Process Economic Analyzer, respectively. Simulation included the characterization of the Colombian SCB and CCS, and the experimental results from pretreatment. It was found that the dilute acid pretreatment is still one of the most perspective technologies for lignocellulosics because of its higher efficiency and lower cost. Higher lignin content of CCS signified a lower cellulose digestibility and therefore lower sugars yield than in the SCB pretreatments.