New proposal for production of bioactive compounds by supercritical technology integrated to a sugarcane biorefinery

Abstract

An integrated biorefinery is designed for the production of a broad range of products (e.g., bioactive compounds, biofuel, heat and bioelectricity) via multiple conversion pathways and technologies, being supercritical technology applied for the recovery of bioactive compounds from natural sources. In this study, first the effects of the extraction conditions from Brazilian ginseng (Pfaffia glomerata) roots including pressure (10-20 MPa), temperature (323-363 K) and CO2/ethanol proportion ratio (90:10 %, 50:50 % and 0:100 %, w/w) on the β-ecdysone content in the extracts was evaluated. Afterward, a stand-alone bioactive compounds production using supercritical CO2 with 10% ethanol as co-solvent (optimized conditions) is compared with integrated first and second generation ethanol production from sugarcane. Simulations were developed using the commercial simulator ASPEN PLUS ® to represent the different scenarios, which provided data for thermal and economic comparisons. Furthermore, a sensitivity analysis was performed to identify the critical parameters of the proposed integrated biorefinery. Results show that the construction of a supercritical fluid extraction (SFE) plant inside or in close proximity to a sugarcane biorefinery is very promising, since the SFE plant could use directly the ethanol, CO2, heat and electricity already available, avoiding logistics costs. Another interesting point of this new proposal, which can be extended for other bioactive compounds sources besides Brazilian ginseng, is the possibility of the use of the cogeneration system of the sugarcane biorefinery to burn the leftover extracted material and its unused parts left in the field after harvesting, contributing to its integral valorization.

Economic Analysis of an Integrated Annatto Seeds-Sugarcane Biorefinery Using Supercritical CO2 Extraction as a First Step

“…The economic benefit of placing an SFE process inside a sugarcane biorefinery was stated previously by Santos et al [8], considering Brazilian ginseng roots as model vegetable biomass. Placing one biorefinery next to other can lead to shared waste and water treatment, shared utility production, use process wastes as raw-material in new processes and other benefits depending on the type of biomass and/or biorefinery studied.…”

“…The sugarcane biorefinery here considered employed the conventional ethanol production the technologies available in modern ethanol distilleries in Brazil and also produced second generation ethanol though enzymatic hydrolysis as described elsewhere [1,8,10]. …”

“…It was considered the burner as a stoichiometric reactor where air in excess (35%) was used to the reaction. The off-gases were cooled to 473 K and the heat was used as the heat source to the steam network [1,8,10]. …”

Product diversification in the sugarcane biorefinery through algae growth and supercritical CO 2 extraction: Thermal and economic analysis

“…Supercritical fluid extraction (SFE) has demonstrated to be an ideal clean technology to be used as part of a holistic biorefinery for the recovery of bioactive compounds from plants and other vegetal materials, prior to its chemical conversion, indicating that SFE can be effectively used during the firststep in biorefinery concepts [13]. Additionally, the benefits of constructing a SFE plant in close proximity to an alcoholic fermentation facility that produces high purity CO 2 as a by-product and ethanol, was already recently demonstrated by our research group [14,15], thus this paper aims to contribute to analyze the impact of some ideas of different researchers to guide future investigation towards the more promising direction.…”

Multi-objective Optimization of Supercritical Water Gasification of Leftover Brazilian Ginseng Roots After Phytochemical Recovery Steps

“…In addition, other important compounds have been identified and could be also recovered with a subsequent extraction process. Our research group has demonstrated that pressurized ethanol, with or without the addition of CO 2 , can successfully be applied as solvent for extracting selectively β-ecdysone from P. glomerata roots (Leal et al, 2010;Santos et al, 2014). On the other hand, a recent patent developed by us described that water can be used as extracting solvent for obtaining a saponin-rich extract that can be used directly as surfactant (Meireles et al, 2013).…”