Energy efficiency of acetone, butanol, and ethanol (ABE) recovery by heat-integrated distillation

Abstract

Acetone, butanol, and ethanol (ABE) is an alternative biofuel. However, the energy requirement of ABE recovery by distillation is considered elevated (> 15.2 MJ fuel/Kg-ABE), due to the low concentration of ABE from fermentation broths (between 15 and 30 g/l). In this work, to reduce the energy requirements of ABE recovery, four processes of heat-integrated distillation were proposed. The energy requirements and economic evaluations were performed using the fermentation broths of several biocatalysts. Energy requirements of the processes with four distillation columns and three distillation columns were similar (between 7.7 and 11.7 MJ fuel/kg-ABE). Double-effect system (DED) with four columns was the most economical process (0.12-0.16 $/kg-ABE). ABE recovery from dilute solutions by DED achieved energy requirements between 6.1 and 8.7 MJ fuel/kg-ABE. Vapor compression distillation (VCD) reached the lowest energy consumptions (between 4.7 and 7.3 MJ fuel/kg-ABE). Energy requirements for ABE recovery DED and VCD were lower than that for integrated reactors. The energy requirements of ABE production were between 1.3- and 2.0-fold higher than that for alternative biofuels (ethanol or isobutanol). However, the energy efficiency of ABE production was equivalent than that for ethanol and isobutanol (between 0.71 and 0.76) because of hydrogen production in ABE fermentation.

Economic optimization of in situ extraction of inhibitors in acetone-ethanol-butanol (ABE) fermentation from lignocellulose

“…Without inhibitors in the prehydrolysates, BA was obtained at 99.7 wt% in SSF-E. The ABE recovery of the total separation system was >0.98 [7].…”

“…The liquid aqueous stream from stripping is mixed with the aqueous stream from the reactor. The distillation systems proposed in this work were designed to obtain butanol, acetone, and ethanol at 99.7, 99.5, and 90.0 wt% [7], respectively. Without inhibitors in the prehydrolysates, BA was obtained at 99.7 wt% in SSF-E.…”

“…The aqueous and organic streams were preheated with the vinasses and recovered extractant, respectively [7]. In heat-integrated distillation, the pressure of the columns is manipulated to apply energy of condensation to the boilers [7,38,40].…”

“…Distillation has been reported as the conventional method used for ABE recovery in Chinese industry [6]. Although distillation is considered to have a high-energy demand by some researchers [6], Jilin Cathy Industrial Biotech, one of the main butanol producers in China, reports low energy requirements using distillation [6] (6-7 kg-steam/kg-butanol [6] or 8-9.4 MJ fuel/kg ABE [7]). In similar way, a recent academic study of four heat-integrated distillation systems shows low energy requirements too (between 4.7 and 11.5 MJ fuel/kg ABE [7]).…”

Analysis of CO2 Emission and Economic Feasibility for a Heat‐Integrated Air Separation System

“…Heat-integrated distillation is a frontier in the energy-saving distillation research and has attracted much attention since the 1970s when it was conceptually introduced by Mah et al [31][32][33][34]. The main characteristic of a HIDiC is that the rectifying section is operated at a higher pressure than the stripping column, which can be easily applied to air separation.…”