Tuesday, May 1, 2012
Napoleon Ballroom C-D, 3rd fl (Sheraton New Orleans)
The industrial biotechnology processes have significant social and economic relevance due to the possible use of renewable resources and the large number of metabolites of industrial interest, which can be generated from these processes. The lactic fermentation has been studied for decades using different types of microorganisms and fermentation operating conditions, and still attracted interest due to its numerous advantages compared to chemical synthesis. The use of lactic acid is limited by the final cost of production, associated mostly to the purification and separation processes of the final product, which require many steps and have high costs. The economic viability of the lactic acid fermentative production process depends on developing an effective method of separation and purification from the fermentation broth. The reactive distillation has been proposed as a promising technique for the recovery of lactic acid with high purity and yield. However, the use of reactive distillation process is not widely used in the industry due to the high energy consumption. Bearing this in mind, this work aims the purification and separation processes optimization of lactic acid using a reactive distillation system. Simulations varying the feed stage and the column reflux rate were performed in order to reduce energy consumption in the process and increase the recovery of lactic acid produced. The simulations were carried out with the aid of the commercial process simulator Aspen PlusTM. Based on the results a reduction around 20% in energy consumption and an increase in the purity of the desired product were observed.