PRODUCTION OF BIO – ETHANOL AND BIO – BASED MATERIALS FROM SUGAR CANE BAGASSE

Abstract

Ethanol may be produced using sugarcane bagasse as raw material through organosolv process with dilute acid hydrolysis, thus increasing ethanol production with the same cultivated sugarcane area . In this work, simulations of bioethanol production from sugarcane juice and bagasse are carried out using software UniSim design. A typical large scale production plant is considered;1000m³/day of ethanol is produced using sugarcane juice as raw materials. A three-step hydrolysis process (pre-hydrolysis of hemicellulose, organosolv delignification and cellulose hydrolysis) of surplus sugarcane bagasse is considered. Pinch analysis is used to determine the minimum hot utility obtained with thermal integration of the plant, in order to find out the maximum availability of bagasse that can be used in the hydrolysis process, taking in to consideration the use of 50% of generated sugarcane trash as fuel for electricity and steam production. Two different causes were analyzed for the production purification step: conventional and double-effect distillation systems. It was found that double effect distillation system allows 90% of generated bagasse to be used as raw material in the hydrolysis plant, which amounts for an increase of 26% in bioethanol production considering exclusively the formation of hexoes obtained from the cellulosic fraction