Anhydrous Bio-Ethanol Production: Development and Optimization of Distillation and Dehydration Steps

Bio-ethanol production is a rapidly growing market due to the possible uses of the anhydrous product in energy generation. This production however, is weighed down by energetic demands and environmental effects.

This paper examines the distillation and dehydration steps of a bio-ethanol production plant complementing a sugar mill. The distillation step is optimized by performing rigorous energy analysis and heat integration on the process utilizing the resources made available by the sugar mill, while pervaporation is used in the dehydration step due to the formulation and use of a pervaporation module integrated into a process simulation engine, several schemes and membrane materials are assessed and compared in light of their energy demands and membrane area required.

The two steps are then combined and the optimization is conducted on the resulting process.