SIMULAÇÃO E ANÁLISE DO PROCESSO DE FERMENTAÇÃO EXTRATIVA LÍQUIDO-LÍQUIDO PARA PRODUÇÃO DE ETANOL

Abstract

Brazil is currently one of the largest producers of ethanol, which in turn is seen as a profitable alternative to gasoline and reflects the minimization of the impacts generated by fossil fuels. There are several ways to obtain ethanol, but the most widely used technology is the alcoholic fermentation of sugary raw materials to obtain first generation ethanol. As in the entire production process, conventional fermentation has some obstacles, such as the inhibition of yeast metabolism by the ethanol itself that is produced. Extractive liquid-liquid fermentation emerges as a possible alternative to solve this problem since it allows the ethanol produced to be continuously removed from the fermentation reactor. In order to optimize this industrial process, the present study aimed to model and simulate the liquid-liquid extractive fermentation process to obtain ethanol and analyze how the main design variables influence the efficiency of ethanol extraction. Therefore, for the solvents evaluated in a preliminary stage, the solvents dodecanol, octanol and m-xylene stood out, however, in the subsequent stages it was proved that solvents with less than 8 carbon in their molecular structure tend to have a higher separation/extraction capacity, i.e., it was noticed that the solvents octanol and m-xylene offer a percentage of 90-99% for the recovery of ethanol for a solvent mass flow rate range from 80 kg/hr to 150 kg/hr for 4 and 5 stages.