BUDAPEST UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLGY AND ECHONOMY

BME

BIOETHANOL PRODUCTION FROM LIGNOCELLULOSIC MATERIAL

INDIVIDUAL PROJECT

JOO FYLLIPY DE LIMA NUNES

22/11/2015

SUMARY

1.INTRODUCTION
2.OBJECTIVES
3. PROJECT WORKFLOW DESCRIPTION
4. CONCLUSION

1. Introduction
The aim of this report is to show na approach to new green fuel derivated from
common and renewable raw materials. In this case, our focus i sinto Ethanol, produced
from Molasses.
Molasses is a dark and viscous liquid, obtained from the the refine of sugarcane into
sugar. The biomass is the most common raw material on Earth, so it is associated with
a cheap fuel alternative.
1.1. Converting Lignocelullosic into Ethanol
This report will show the step by step process, mass balance, tables and its results to
the better explanation of the convertion of biomas into ethanol.

2. Objectives
All the brief knowledge adquired will be used in the constant cooperation between the
petroleum industry and sugar and alcoohol industry in the search for better process,
where all the brief aspects of this Individual Project can be used.

3. Project Workflow Description

In the pictures below all the process can be seen, where each steps will be apresented
later in this report. The software used in the process is Aspen Plus 8.0

(A)

(B)
Fig. 1: The process workflow part 1 (A) and part 2 (B)

3.1. Data Entry Table

Below it is the table showing the data entry and its fraction.

Materials
Water*
Yeast (S4)
Molasses

Inlet Amount
(KG/HR)
6352
270
11408

Broth (exit of reactor)

15385

Content

----------------------------------Sucrose
Water
Other
------------------

1
1
0,5
0,2
0,3
1

Table 1: Inlets

As you can see, all the inlet amount are in Kg/hr. This unit was setup in the begining of
the entire project. So quantity requested in the Project (100 000 tonnes of molasses
per year), as you can see be in the table, was automatically converted into kg/hr.
11408 Kg/hr =~ 100 ktoones/year.

The water is mixed with molasses first and then the solution is mixed with yeast (S4
stream) in a second. It is easy to see the process in the following image.

Fig.2: The mixing process

3.2. Pressure and Temperature

The pressure are constant in the entire process. But the temperature will be higher
than in the begining before enter in the Reactor (fermentation). The following
table show the mass amout, pressure and temperature in the first steps of the
process:
Start

Molasses
Molasses Solution
Molasses+Yeast+Wat
er
Broth

Temperature
10
10
10

Before enter in
the Reactor (after
the heater)
Pressure Temp
Press
1
32
1
1
32
1
1
32
1

-------------------------- 32
1
Temperature in C and pressure in bar.

After the reactor

Temp
32
32
32

Press
1
1
1

32

Table 2: Pressure and temperature in differents steps

3.3 The fermentation and fraction of ethanol in the Reactor

The moisture must be pre-heated to 32C (see table 2) before enter in the
fermenter. All the fermentation process depends of the hydrolysis of Sucrose into
Glucose and Frutose. The reactions are ilustred below:

Fig. 3 The fermentation reaction.

But the reactions has a certain fraction of conversion. This conversion fractions are
the following:
90% of Glucose are converted into ethanol
90% of Frutose are converted into Ethanol
5% of Glucose are converted into Glycerol
5% of Glucose are converted into Glycerol
Just 95% of each component reacts. It is almost impossible of a 100% reaction.
But the percentage of ethanol in the Reactor (fermenter) the solution inside, of
course depends of the the quantity of water mixed with molasses (molasses
solution). So, this amount of water that enter in the first mixer must be calculated.
To do this, at the beggining, Aspen used a arbitrary amount of inlet water (10
ktonnes/year, for example) and the calculus will be held on the design specs tools.
3.3.1 Design Specs of water and Yeast
The target of ethanol in the solution is 18%. So it is needed to define a variable to
calculate this percentage of the ethanol. So in the following image it was defined
the variable for ethanol:

Fig. 4: Defining the variable ETH018

So, after the variable definition, it was just to set the target (0.18) in ethanol and
Aspen will automatically change the inlet amount of water to the desire target of
ethanol.

Fig.5: Setting the target and visualizing the results

The same problem was faced with the yeast amount. The specification set a
density target of 15g/L (considering 1g/cm). So the process was the same:
creation of a new variable and the set of the target to calculation.

Fig. 6: Defining the variable YCONC, setting the target and seeing the results

So, for the inlet of water and yeast it was 6300.49kg/hr and 269.437kg/hr
respectively.

In this way we can do a fine tune adjusting the tolerance for a acceptable error.
After processed in the fermenter, the broth should go to the stillage process.

3.3. Stillage
The broth, now fermented, need to have its ethanol separeted from the other
materials. How the boiling point of ethanol is smaller than the other substance, a
use of a stillage column is the best option. In the overhead the vapor of ethanol
will comes out (with some amount of water) and, in the botom, the other
substance, as the yeast, water and nom fermented sugars will comes out.
With have a targe of ethanol of mass recovery in the stillage tower of 99,3%. Using
20 plates we face the problem of how much energy (or heat) we need to put into
the stillage column. To face this problem, we need to defined new variables again
(using the Design Specs tool). This process can be seen in the next image:

Fig.7: Defininf the variables ETOUT and ETIN

So we need to set na interval to resolve the calculations to see our ETOUT/ETIN.
With these calculations we can reduce the min and max limits of our interval to a
more accurate result. In this case, we found that our desire value was between
1705.47 and 1706.16 kW.

Fig 8: The table showing the results for the results

This fracion (~0.993) can be found at the exit of the overhead, as seen below (in
the ethanol line):

The following table shows the mass flow and themperature at the entry and exit of
the Stillage column:
Entry
Exit
OVERHEAD
STILAGE
Temperature (C)
80
87
101
Mass (kg/hr)
15385
4019
11366
Table 3: Ins and Outs from the stillage

It means that 26,12% of the entry mass are going throught the OVERHEAD.

3.4. Utilies
Ir order to have a flux inside the heat exchangers, we must define two utilies.
Water and Steam. As you can see below, the vapor has a pressure of 8 bars due
the fact when we have more pressure the boiling point of water is more higher. So
the Heat exchange can be more efficient.

Fig 9: The uttilites

So we can build the heat integration scheme below:

We can see the plot below how the cold and hot stream behaviors for the firs heat
exchange:

Heat exchange
90

81

81

80
70
60
50
32

40
30
20

10

10
0
1

2
hot line

cold line

Plot 1: Hot and cold line

Below we have the plot for the second:

Heat Exchange 2
100
90

87
80

81

80
70
60
50
40

32

30
20
10
0
1

By the behavior of these plots we can conclude that, respecting our limito f more
tha 10C between the ends, that our heat exchanges are concurrent for our first
chart and countercurrent for the second. We needed one more heater at the end
just to reduce the vapor fraction to 0 in the end of the final stream.
4. Conclusion
Our program runned without erros and gave us these results in the final stream:

Fig 10: The results in the FINAL stream