Energy efficient design of bio-butanol purification process from acetone butanol ethanol fermentation
Journal
Journal of the Taiwan Institute of Chemical Engineers
Journal Volume
130
Date Issued
2022
Author(s)
Abstract
Butanol has the potential as a transportation fuel since its energy density is similar to gasoline and higher than ethanol. The Acetone-Butanol-Ethanol (ABE) fermentation is the current main method to produce bio-butanol where the fermentation should be operated in diluted surroundings to avoid toxicity to microorganisms. This article aims to develop efficient separation sequences to purify individual components from the ABE fermentation. The base design comes from the reference proposed by Patra?cu et al. [3]. With an updated thermodynamic model, several novel design alternatives are proposed and investigated to reduce energy consumption in the separation sequences. Therein, the proposal of removing acetone at first, and purifying ethanol via integration of distillation and membrace not only reduces total energy consumption and total annual cost by 57% and 52%, but also reaches targeting purity of 99.5% for butanol, acetone and ethanol. Heat integration and column stacking can reduce the overall energy consumption furthermore. This study also carries on plantwide control for the processes with heat integration and column stacking. The superior control performance with ±10% changes in throughput and feed compositions is validated for the proposed plantwide process control scheme. ? 2021 Taiwan Institute of Chemical Engineers
Subjects
Acetone-butanol-ethanol (ABE) fermentation
Column stacking
Heat integration
Plantwide control
Process design
Acetone
Distillation
Distillation columns
Energy efficiency
Energy utilization
Ethanol
Fermentation
Integration
Acetone-butanol-ethanol fermentation
Energy-efficient design
Individual components
Plantwide process control
Purification process
Reduce energy consumption
Total energy consumption
Transportation fuels
Process control
Type
journal article