9-04: One half generation bioethanol process: a flexible way to produce fuel and energy

An increasing interest has been given to the biofuels production, especially bioethanol, due to the recent instability of petroleum prices and the need to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases, which motivates the search for alternative renewable energy sources to achieve sustainable development in a broad sense. This situation puts alcoholchemistry, the chemical industry  segment that uses ethanol as feedstock, in evidence again, since  it could be a viable alternative or even a substitute for petrochemical industry, with ethanol assuming the place of petroleum as a raw material  resource in near future.  In Brazil, the sugar cane industry keeps the greatest commercial energy production in the world with bioethanol. In addition to growing sugar cane and processing it to produce bioethanol and electricity,new biorefineries in Brazil should focus on marketing conventional bioethanol, its associated agricultural assets and co-generation plants, as well as making use of the acquired data and experience to contribute to research aimed at developing next generation biofuels. In this work, the simulation  of an integrated process for  bioethanol and sugar production  and co-generation power with total utilization of raw materials and byproducts of sugar production was developed. In the simulation was considered sugar cane extraction, juice treatment and, concentration for sugar  production and fermentation to produce ethanol as well as producing steam for power generation. The ethanol purification also was considered.  With the development of this work was possible to observe the flexibility of the integrated production of fuels and energy from an economical and efficient process.