Bioethanol plant

BP has investments in an ethanol plant with DuPont and Associated British Foods. It is also investing in cellulosic ethanol research and developing jatropha as a biodiesel feedstock. BP and DuPont are planning a biobutanol demonstration plant and BP would like to eventually convert their ethanol plant to biobutanol production. BP has a 400 million investment with Associated British Foods and DuPont to build a bioethanol plant in the U.K. that may be converted to biobutanol. It has spent 500 million over 10 years at the Energy Biosciences Institute in California to research future biofuels and 9.4 million over 10 years to fund the Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) in India to study the production of biodiesel from Jatropha curcas. It also has a 160 million joint venture with D1 Oils to develop the planting of Jatropha curcas. 

Figure 8.18 Flow schemes ofthe separation train of a 50-million gallon/y bioethanol plant. Current technology is illustrated in (a). Pervaporation membranes can be used to replace the molecular-sieve drier of the plant (b) or vapor-permeation membranes can be used to replace the rectifier column and molecular-sieve units (c).

For the purpose of conceptual design of the bioethanol plant, Aspen Plus will be used as the flowsheet simulator. However, most of the key components involved in the process are not defined in the standard Aspen Plus property databases, and therefore their physical property data are not available. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has developed a database that includes a complete set of properties for the currently identifiable compounds in the ethanol process [28]. 

Table 15.13 Summary of the mass and energy balance for the bioethanol plant.

Table 3. Overall eosts for a bioethanol plant produeing 24 million liters/year. The facility eonsiders both the ethanol and eo-produet processing plants.

CfS-based analyses are also used in facihty location planning, for example, for bioethanol plants [73] or BtL plants [74]. Additionally operations research provides a large toolset for the mathematical characterization, formulation, and solution of facihty location planning problems and supply chain design. Overviews can be found, for example, in [76, 77]. Examples for appHcations to the industrial valorization of renewable raw materials can be found in [39, 40, 78]. Some works combine both approaches (see, e.g., [79, 80]). 

Deverell, R. and MacDonnell, K. (2007) Development of a geospatial model to assess proposed bioethanol plant site locations in Ireland. Proceedir s of Phe 15th European Biomass Conference Exhibition. Berlin, 266-268. 

Gonzalez Diaz V, Crespo A., Gomez J., Parra C.. Availability and reliability assessment of industrial complex systems A practical view applied on a bioethanol plant simulation , 2009Taylor Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-0 15-48513-5. Pag. 687 95. 

The liquefaction and saccharification steps are required for the starchy crops. In these two processes, a-amylase and glucoamyiase are added respectively to convert starch into glucose. These two processes are also collectively known as hydrolysis. It should however be noted that some bioethanol plants use acid instead of enzymes for the hydrolysis process. 

While those processes involving enzymes tend to progress at rather leisurely paces, some fermentation processes may be limited by oxygen availability and therefore susceptible to mass transfer intensification. The ability to intensify such reactions remains attractive in food production, some pharmaceutics production and waste disposal - in fact reactors such as those based upon oscillatory baffle movement are becoming increasingly a commercial reality - typified by the work of co-author Dr Adam Harvey at Newcastle University on his portable bioethanol plant. (As an aside, a literature search of process intensification inevitably encompasses intensive agriculture - PI on a grander scale )... 

Figure 2 An illustration of the various research activities underway to develop the next generation bioethanol plant. The 3 key areas of R D are in pretreatments, enzyme hydrolysis andfermentations. Significant efforts focus on process engineering cmd plant designs with the following at the core SHF -separate hydrolysis and fermentation, SSF - a simultaneous saccharification-fermentation, or SSCF - a simultaneous saccharification-cofermentation.

There are no special agronomic requirements of these crops grown for biofuels. Any oilseed rape variety can be used for biodiesel and wheat is the favoured cereal for bioethanol as its starch yield is higher than barley. British Sugar have a bioethanol plant at their Wissington factory which can also use wheat. 

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