Enhanced Down-Stream Processing of Biobutanol in the ABE Fermentation Process

Bîldea, Costin Sorin; Patraşcu, Iulian; Hernández, Juan Gabriel Segovia; Kiss, Anton A.

doi:10.1016/b978-0-444-63428-3.50168-5

Cited by 15 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…After developing the base case, the new design was optimized using the total annual cost (TAC) as objective function to be minimized (Bildea et al, 2016):…”

Section: Process Optimizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, the use of distillation for butanol recovery is considered too demanding in terms of energy requirements, using up to 220% of the energy content of butanol. But this value could be drastically reduced (to about 20% or even less) when the distillation process is combined with in-situ product recovery (ISPR) techniques (Bildea et al, 2016;Xue et al, 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Eco-efficient butanol separation in the ABE fermentation process

Patraşcu

Bîldea

Kiss

2017

Separation and Purification Technology

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Keywords 11Downstream processing, distillation, dividing-wall column, optimal design, process control 12 13 Highlights 14• Energy efficient downstream processing in the acetone-butanol-ethanol (ABE) process 15• Cost effective distillation process for butanol separation and purification 16• Optimal process design including heat-integration, still robust and controllable 17 18 Abstract 19Butanol is considered a superior biofuel, as it is more energy dense and less hygroscopic than 20 the more popular ethanol, resulting in higher possible blending ratios with gasoline. However, 21 the production cost of the acetone-butanol-ethanol (ABE) fermentation process is still high, 22 mainly due to the low butanol titer, yield and productivity in bioprocesses. The conventional 23 recovery by distillation is an energy-intensive process that has largely restricted the economic 24 production of biobutanol. Other methods based on gas stripping, liquid-liquid extraction, 25 adsorption, and membranes are also energy intensive due to the bulk removal of water. 26This work proposes a new process for the butanol recovery by enhanced distillation (e.g. 27 dividing-wall column technology) using only few operating units in an optimized sequence to 28 reduce overall costs. A plant capacity of 40 ktpy butanol is considered and purities of 99.4 29 %wt butanol, 99.4 %wt acetone and 91.4 %wt ethanol. The complete downstream processing 30 was rigorously simulated and optimized using Aspen Plus. The enhanced process is effective 31 in terms of eco-efficiency (1.24 kWh/kg butanol, significant lower costs and emissions) and 32 can be readily employed at large scale to improve the economics of biobutanol production. 33

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“…After developing the base case, the new design was optimized using the total annual cost (TAC) as objective function to be minimized (Bildea et al, 2016):…”

Section: Process Optimizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Eco-efficient butanol separation in the ABE fermentation process

Patraşcu

Bîldea

Kiss

2017

Separation and Purification Technology

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“…Acetone is obtained traditionally from petroleum as a side product in the cumene process, so the derived diesel is not entirely renewable. The main green route for obtaining acetone is the acetone–butanol–ethanol fermentation (ABE), but the selectivity of this process is very low because the main scope of this reaction is to improve butanol yields . However, if acetone is used, the range of carbon chain lengths that can be obtained, C 8 –C 13 or C 9 –C 15 , which depends on the considered aldehyde, is not enough to guarantee a good‐quality diesel.…”

Section: Figurementioning

confidence: 99%

Cyclopentanone as an Alternative Linking Reactant for Heterogeneously Catalyzed Furfural Aldol Condensation

et al. 2017

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The use of cyclopentanone, instead of acetone, in the synthesis of diesel precursors by furfural aldol condensation is proposed. This reaction is catalyzed by a magnesium–zirconium mixed oxide. To optimize the C15 selectivity, different temperatures (293, 303, 313, and 323 K) and initial furfural/cyclopentanone ratios (1:1, 3:1, 5:1, and 10:1) were tested. Under the optimum conditions, yields for the desired C15 adduct are higher than 60 % in less than 4 h under mild conditions (303 K).

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“…A subsequent distillation system is still necessary for solvents purification [ 8 , 16 , 17 ]. Compared to the energy-intensive distillation that directly fed with the ABE fermentation broth, separation processes that coupled ISPR techniques with distillation could also significantly reduce the energy demand in ABE processes [ 11 , 18 , 19 ]. Lately, novel downstream processes such as vacuum separation–distillation [ 20 ], gas stripping–distillation [ 13 , 19 ], extraction–distillation [ 21 – 23 ], pervaporation–distillation [ 11 , 24 ] and the hybrid separations–distillation were well developed and deeply analyzed [ 13 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Novel distillation process for effective and stable separation of high-concentration acetone–butanol–ethanol mixture from fermentation–pervaporation integration process

Chen

Cai

Chen

et al. 2018

Biotechnol Biofuels

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BackgroundOne of the major obstacles of acetone–butanol–ethanol (ABE) fermentation from renewable biomass resources is the energy-intensive separation process. To decrease the energy demand of the ABE downstream separation processes, hybrid in situ separation system with conventional distillation is recognized as an effective method. However, in the distillation processes, the high reflux ratio of the ethanol column and the accumulation of ethanol on top of the water and butanol columns led to poor controllability and high operation cost of the distillations. In this study, vacuum distillation process which is based on a decanter-assisted ethanol–butanol–water recycle loop named E-TCD sequence was developed to improve the conventional separation sequence for ABE separation. The permeate of in situ pervaporation system was used as the feed.ResultsThe distillation processes were simulated and optimized by iterative strategies. ABE mixture with acetone, butanol and ethanol concentrations of 115.8 g/L, 191.4 g/L and 17.8 g/L (the other composition was water) that obtained from fermentation–pervaporation integration process was used as the feed. A plant scaled to 1025 kg/h of ABE mixture was performed, and the product purities were 100 wt% of butanol, 99.7 wt% of acetone and 95 wt% of ethanol, respectively. Results showed that only 5.3 MJ/kg (of butanol) was required for ABE separation, which was only 37.54% of the energy cost in conventional distillation processes.ConclusionsCompared with the drawbacks of ethanol accumulation in butanol–water recycle loop and the extremely high recovery rate of ethanol in conventional distillation processes, simulation results obtained in the current work avoided the accumulation of ethanol based on the novel E-TCD sequence.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1186/s13068-018-1284-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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Enhanced Down-Stream Processing of Biobutanol in the ABE Fermentation Process

Cited by 15 publications

References 13 publications

Eco-efficient butanol separation in the ABE fermentation process

Eco-efficient butanol separation in the ABE fermentation process

Cyclopentanone as an Alternative Linking Reactant for Heterogeneously Catalyzed Furfural Aldol Condensation

Novel distillation process for effective and stable separation of high-concentration acetone–butanol–ethanol mixture from fermentation–pervaporation integration process

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