CCE Mass Balance Revision Tutorial
Glucose is only about 75% of the sweetness of sucrose (table sugar), whereas fructose is
the most sweet of all natural sugars, about twice as sweet as glucose. Glucose isomerase
is an enzyme from the glycolysis cycle that can be used to convert glucose to fructose,
with great economic benefits to the food industry.
In order to produce High Fructose Syrups by this method, glucose solutions are produced
by hydrolysis of starch (usually from corn) and are then fed to an enzyme reactor. This
contains the enzyme “immobilized” (physically or, more usually, chemically attached) to
small beads that can be packed into a bed to make a packed bed reactor.
Actually, instead of the pure enzyme, cells containing the enzyme are used. Novozymes
sells immobilized Bacillus coagulans cells for this purpose.
The conversion of glucose to fructose is an equilibrium reaction. At 60ºC and pH7.5, the
equilibrium is 50.7% fructose and 49.3% glucose. However, it would take a long time to
reach the equilibrium, so the reaction is only taken part way. In this exercise to a
conversion of 44.2% glucose to fructose will be assumed.
Production of the initial glucose solution results in there being some oligosaccharides
(“oligos”) present. These are not affected by the enzyme.
A partly filled spreadsheet is given in the file GlucIsomBlank.xlsx. Rename a copy of
this to work upon, and then try to fill in the mass balances. The individual worksheets
show the steps in the process. Note the basis of the balance is entered into cell 'Prep
Tank'!D34. You should start with this having a value of 1000 (kg 1 te of glucose feed
liquor). Later you can scale up or down appropriately, e.g. to get some desired value in
cell 'Prep Tank'!F25 at the end of your calculations. Stream compositions should flow
from worksheet to worksheet, just as the streams themselves do. This allows easy
recalculation if conditions or assumptions are changed.
Name critical cells so they can be referred to easily and clearly in formulae. An example
is cell 'Prep Tank'!D34, which is already named “basis”. Naming makes it MUCH easier
to return to what you have done and understand it. In a large spreadsheet this is vital,
especially when (as here) there are many linked sheets in a workbook. It is also a lot
easier to type “basis” in a formula than “'Prep Tank'!D34”.
(a) What is the final composition of the product?
(Ans.: ca. 38% glucose, 30% fructose, 4% oligosaccharides, remainder water)
(b) What is the required feedrate of liquor if 100 te day-1 of the product solution is
needed?
(Ans.: 157.78 te day-1)
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Make a final worksheet that shows all the flows into and out of the plant (as a whole).
Show that these flows do actually balance, so that Input = Output!
If you have time and want to try recycles and purges, add a new plant section that takes
the product from the Evaporator and passes it through a chromatographic separation.
This can be consider to operate as shown in the diagram:
10
Glucose:fructose:oligos
10:90:0 (dry weight basis)
11
12
waste
Stream 11 is now very highly enriched fructose syrup, the final product, containing all the
fructose (in this exercise!). Stream 12 contains much of the unreacted glucose, all of the
oligosaccharides, and no fructose. It can be assumed that the concentration of total
sugars is the same in all the streams (i.e. there is the same percentage of water in streams
10, 11 and 12).
Finally, consider possible recycle of the unreacted glucose (stream 12) back to the inlet of
the enzyme reactor. Note that the oligosaccharides are an inert component. There will
therefore have to be a purge stream (13), leading to the final arrangement:
10
Glucose:fructose:oligos
10:90:0 (dry weight basis)
11
waste
12
recycle to reactor
13
purge
Stream 13 and steam 12 will have the same composition.
The spreadsheet will contain circular references if you include the recycle. If Excel
warns you of this, look in the Help files to see what to do. However, it may already be set
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up to do Automatic Calculations with sensible values for the number of interations and
the maximum change allowed on an interation.
Note that the final level of inerts in this sort of recycle can be adjusted by changing the
purge rate (high purge, low inerts, wasted reactant; low purge, high inerts that will
increase reactor size and costs, and might alter reactor operation). In this instance make
the amounts of stream 13 and stream 12 in the ratio 10:90. In this case, what % of the
total sugars leaving the Enzyme Reactor (stream 4) are oligosaccharides?
(Ans.: 22 %w/w)
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