Abstract

DE ARMAS MARTINEZ, Ana Celia; MORALES ZAMORA, Marlén; ALBERNAS CARVAJAL, Yailet  and  GONZALEZ SUAREZ, Erenio. Alternatives to convert a cuban sugar factory in a biorefiner industry. cen. az. [online]. 2018, vol.45, n.3, pp. 65-77. ISSN 2223-4861.

The Cuban sugar industry opens possibilities for biorefinerydevelopment due the characteristics of its mass flow currents and its facilities for obtaining different products, co-products and energy. In present paper, biorefinery schemes were evaluated in a Cuban sugar factory with the integration of products and by-products. Two schemes were proposed for the development of a biorefinery in a Cuban sugar industry, considering the obtaining of second generation ethanol (2G) and third generation biodiesel (3G) (Alternative I), as well as obtaining ethanol from molasse -filters juices and bagasse hydrolyzed and biodiesel 3G (Alternative II). When analyzing these alternatives based on results of mass balances, the AlternativeI is not feasible from a technical point of view, since the amount of bagasse used for hydrolyzateproduction makes the plant not self-sufficient energetically, consuming 2 868 609 kW-h / year of the National Electric System (SEN). When carrying out the economic evaluation it was obtained that alternative IIis technically and economically feasible, since it has a NPV of $ 19 129 956, a TIR of 41.9% and a payback of 4.4 years, achieving in this way the integration of a sugar industry to a biorefinery that obtains second and third generation products.

Keywords : alternative; biorefinery; bioethanol second generation; third generation biodiesel.

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