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*

Inlet
Amount
(KG/HR)
6352

Yeast (S4)

270

Molasses

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
+Water
Broth

Before enter
in the Reactor
(after the
heater)
Temp
Press

Temp

Press

32
32

1
1

32
32

1
1

32

32

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

Temperatu
re
10
10

Pressu
re
1
1

10

After the
reactor

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
Temperature
(C)
Mass (kg/hr)

80

Exit
OVERHEAD
87

15385
4019
Table 3: Ins and Outs from the stillage

STILAGE
101
11366

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
81

81

32

10

1
hot line

cold line

Plot 1: Hot and cold line

Below we have the plot for the second:

Heat Exchange 2
87
80

81

32

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