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Environmental and economic assessment of vegetable oil production using membrane separation and vapor recompression

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Abstract

Solvent extraction of crude oil from oilseeds is widely applied for its high production capacity and low cost. In this process, solvent recovery and tail gas treatment are usually performed by adsorption, paraffin scrubbing, or even cryogenics (at low tail gas flow rates). Membrane separation, which has a lower energy consumption than these techniques, spans a broad range of admissible concentrations and flow rates, and is moreover easily combined with other techniques. Vapor recompression has potentials to reduce the heat loss in association with distillation and evaporation. In this study, we proved the possibility of combining membrane separation and vapor recompression to improve the conventional vegetable oil production, by both experiments and process simulation. Nearly 73% of energy can be saved in the process of vegetable oil extraction by the novel processing approach. By further environmental assessment, several impact categories show that the optimized process is environmentally sustainable.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Basic Research Program of China (973 program, Grant Nos. 2013CB733600 and 2012CB72520), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 21390202 and 21436002).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Beijing Key Lab of Bioprocess, College of Life Science and Technology, Beijing University of Chemical Technology, Beijing, 100029, China

    Weibin Kong, Qi Miao, Peiyong Qin & Tianwei Tan

  2. School of Engineering, University of Warwick, Coventry, CV4 7AL, UK

    Jan Baeyens

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  1. Weibin Kong
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  2. Qi Miao
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  3. Peiyong Qin
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  4. Jan Baeyens
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  5. Tianwei Tan
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Correspondence to Tianwei Tan.

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Kong, W., Miao, Q., Qin, P. et al. Environmental and economic assessment of vegetable oil production using membrane separation and vapor recompression. Front. Chem. Sci. Eng. 11, 166–176 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11705-017-1616-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11705-017-1616-4

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