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Production of ethanol from dilute glucose solutions A technical-economic evaluation of various refining alternatives

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Abstract

In order for ethanol to be competitive with gasoline, the production cost of ethanol must be lower than it is today. One economically crucial step in the production of ethanol from lignocellulosics is refining, since hydrolysis yields dilute glucose solutions which, after fermentation, result in a dilute ethanol solution, 2–3 wt-% ethanol. A technical-economic investigation of various energy-saving alternatives to conventional distillation has been performed. The energy-saving techniques investigated were: multi-column distillation, distillation with mechanical vapour recompression, distillation with an absorption heat transformer, phase separation with potassium carbonate and extraction of ethanol from the fermentation broth with Aldol 85. The most economical refining step for the production of ethanol from a dilute glucose solution, around 5 wt-%, was found to be multicolumn distillation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemical Engineering 1, Lund University, P.O. Box 124, S-221 00, Lund, Sweden

    M. Larsson & G. Zacchi

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  1. M. Larsson
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  2. G. Zacchi
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The authors wish to thank the Swedish Ethanol Development Foundation (SSEU) and The Swedish National Board for Industrial and Technical Development (NUTEK) for their financial support. The authors would also like to thank Professor Åke Jernqvist at The Department of Chemical Engineering 1, Lund University for his help with the calculations of the heat transformer cycle.

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Larsson, M., Zacchi, G. Production of ethanol from dilute glucose solutions A technical-economic evaluation of various refining alternatives. Bioprocess Engineering 15, 125–132 (1996). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00369615

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