13-42: Thermal integration of the dehydration ethanol process using molecular sieve: pinch analysis

Recently, the use of ethanol as an alternative biofuel has gained notoriety as a green alternative to fossil fuels. However, the existence of an azeotrope in the mixture ethanol - water provides a barrier to the complete separation of the components of the mixture by conventional distillation, in which the water-ethanol mixture can be enriched up to 95% by weight. Conventionally the techniques employed for final purification are the extractive and azeotropic distillation, although the relative importance of adsorption has increased in recent years, as a result of rising energy costs, which has favored the processes with higher thermal efficiency and the development of processes adsorption and the invention of molecular sieves. Bearing this in mind, this work aims to develop the thermal integration based on the Pinch analysis to the anhydrous ethanol production using molecular sieve through the process simulation. The simulation and optimization studies were carried out with the aid of Aspen Plus^TM process simulation environment, being possible to optimize the anhydrous bioethanol production process with lower energy consumption,  higher purity ethanol, without contamination by solvents such as benzene and cyclohexane.