13-38: Evaluation of multicomponent batch distillation of the wine of sugarcane fermentation

Tuesday, May 1, 2012
Napoleon Ballroom C-D, 3rd fl (Sheraton New Orleans)
Mario E. T. Alvarez, Elenise B. Moraes, Anderson J. Bonon and Maria R. Wolf-Maciel, Department of Chemical Process, State University of Campinas - UNICAMP - School of Chemical Engineering, Campinas-SP, Brazil
In Brazil, ethanol is the principle fuel used as a fuel-oil substitute for transport vehicles. Ethanol is biodegradable, low in toxicity and causes little environmental pollution if spilt, also is a high octane fuel and has replaced lead as an octane enhancer in gasoline. By blending anhydrous ethanol with gasoline we can also oxygenate the fuel mixture. Moreover, the hydrous ethanol fuel can be used by flexible fuel vehicles, in which its combustion produces less toxic hydrocarbon emissions than gasoline, because they have lower atmospheric reactivity. Energy and greenhouse gas emissions balances were very favorable for ethanol derived from sugarcane. Ethanol has been increasingly viewed as the most important alternative to fossil fuels, and there are many studies to be developed in order to have a total knowledge of this theme. In the sugarcane fermentation, the main product is ethanol and water, however, other alcohols are produced as methanol, propanol, isobutanol, acetaldehyde, acetone, and fusel oil mainly isoamyl alcohol are present in low concentrations.

In this work, experimental data from the batch distillation of the wine of sugarcane fermentation were performed. The experimental data were made in a Fischer Autodest 800AC distillation column, adapted for ethanol recovery. The distillate fractions containing ethanol, fusel oil and other volatile components were collected and analyzed by gas chromatography method. Simultaneously, the simulation of this process was performed using the Aspen Plus simulator and the results were compared with experimental results in order to study the representation of thermodynamic models in the distillation process.

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