Biorefineries offer very interesting challenges and opportunities associated with the separation and purification of complex biomass components. Separation and purification processes can account for a large fraction of the total capital and operating costs. Significant improvement in separation and purification technologies can greatly reduce overall production costs and improve economic viability and environmental sustainability. Process intensification is a valuable strategy to enhance the performance of production processes. It may allow reductions in costs and environmental impact, and enhancements in terms of operability and safety. Although the PI philosophy and methodology have a relatively long history in the scientific field, the ideas of this philosophy fit well with the current trends of sustainability and circular economy; since both ideas, in short, seek the reduction of resource use, the reduction of waste, and the continuous and circular use of raw materials. To ensure the sustainability of the purification of biofuels, it is important to develop processes with low environmental impact, which can also be allowed through the development of intensified technologies. In this paper, advances on aided process design applied to the purification of liquid biofuels using Process Intensification are presented. Trends and challenges are discussed, together with the main opportunity areas. 

Current Status and Future Trends of Computer-Aided Process Design, Applied to Purification of Liquid Biofuels, Using Process Intensification: A Short Review

Distillation-based separation processes, such as extractive or heteroazeotropic distillation, present important processes for separating azeotropic mixtures in the chemical and biochemical industry. However, heteroazeotropic distillation has received much less attention than extractive distillation, which can be attributed to multiple reasons. The phase equilibrium calculations require a correct evaluation of phase stability, while the topology of the heterogeneous mixtures is generally more complex, comprising multiple azeotropes and distillation regions, resulting in an increased modeling complexity. Due to the integration of distillation columns and a decanter, even the simulation of these processes is considered more challenging, while an optimal process design should include the selection of a suitable solvent, considering the performance of the integrated hybrid process. Yet, the intricate mixture topologies largely impede the use of simplified criteria for solvent selection. To overcome these limitations and allow for a process-based screening of potential solvents, the current work presents a topology-based initialization and optimization approach for designing heteroazeotropic distillation processes. The systematic initialization enables an efficient evaluation of different solvents with different mixture topologies, which is further exploited for optimization-based sensitivity analysis and multi-objective optimization. Three case studies are analyzed with about 170 individually optimized process designs, including stage numbers, feed locations, phase ratios, and heat duties.

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Topology-Based Initialization for the Optimization-Based Design of Heteroazeotropic Distillation Processes

Potential of Thermo-Tolerant Microorganisms for Production of Cellulosic Bioethanol

Purification of Butanol from the ABE Mixture: Effect of Intensification on the Dynamic Behavior

Global society has experienced a tremendous development since the institution of civilization [...]

/pdf/special-issue-on-sustainable-modellings-processes-and-1ajw4e4p.pdf

Special Issue on “Sustainable Modellings, Processes and Applications for Societal Development”

Ethanol is considered as a renewable transport fuels and demand is expected to grow. In this work, trends related to bio-ethanol production are described using Thailand as an example. Developments on high-temperature fermentation and membrane technologies are also explained. This study focuses on the application of membranes in ethanol recovery after fermentation. A preliminary simulation was performed to compare different process configurations to concentrate 10 wt% ethanol to 99.5 wt% using membranes. In addition to the significant energy reduction achieved by replacing azeotropic distillation with membrane dehydration, employing ethanol-selective membranes can further reduce energy demand. Silicalite membrane is a type of membrane showing one of the highest ethanol-selective permeation performances reported today. A silicalite membrane was applied to separate a bio-ethanol solution produced via high-temperature fermentation followed by a single distillation. The influence of contaminants in the bio-ethanol on the membrane properties and required further developments are also discussed.

https://www.mdpi.com/2227-9717/9/6/1028/pdf

Morihisa Yokota

Papers

Process Intensification in Bio-Ethanol Production–Recent Developments in Membrane Separation