Introduction:

Lignocellulosic biomass and especially agro-industrial by-products have ceased to be waste-problem products, to become potential raw material for various processes, being the production of bioethanol one of the most important.

Objective:

To analyze by process simulation the technological alternatives for bioethanol production from sugarcane bagasse so that the process will be technically, economically and environmentally efficient,

Materials and Methods:

It was started from the technological design of a plant for the production of bioethanol base and three technological alternatives were simulated: (1) the influence of bagasse humidity, (2) the influence of dilution speed and (3) simultaneous saccharification and fermentation.

Results and Discussion:

With the comparison of the technical, economic and environmental analyzes, it was determined that the best results were obtained with alternative 3, which includes the simultaneous saccharification and fermentation process.

Conclusions:

Alternative 3 produces 1 275 279.0 L/year of bioethanol at 95.85% purity, a productivity of 2.51 g/Lh, a unit cost of 8.79 $/L with satisfactory environmental results.

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