Abstract

GONZALEZ CORTES, Meilyn; MARTINEZ MARTINEZ, Yenisleidy; ALBERNAS CARVAJAL, Yailet  and  PEREZ BERMUDEZ, Raúl A.. Irreversibility generation in sugar, alcohol and biogas integrated productions. cen. az. [online]. 2017, vol.44, n.1, pp.82-95. ISSN 0253-5777.

In this work, the stages of losses and lower exergetic efficiency are determined when the sugar production process is integrated with others for the production of products such as biogas, torula yeast and electricity. The study is carried out in three scenarios of integrated processes for obtaining the indicated products. A sugar factory in which sugar and electricity are produced is considered as the base scenario and from this; a second scenario is inferred in which alcohol is produced from the molasses of the sugar process and biogas from the vinasse of the alcohol distillation process. Finally, a third scenario is exergetically evaluated in which sugar, electricity, biogas and alcohol are produced, but this last one from juices and molasses of the sugar process. For the exergetic analysis the integrated scheme was divided into 8 subsystems. From the analysis of results, the major subsystems that generate irreversibilities are: cogeneration (64.36-65.98%), juice extraction (8.85-9.85%), crystallization and cooking, (8.48 -9.02%), fermentation (4.12-4.94%) and distillation (2.74-3.2%). Improvements are proposed to minimize irreversibilities, including the thermal integration of processes, technological modifications in the fermentation process and the introduction of more efficient equipment for the generation of electricity. The exergetic efficiency is between 78.95-81.10%, obtaining greater exergetic efficiency in the scheme of joint operation to produce sugar, alcohol and biogas.

Keywords : Alcohol; biogas; sugar cane; exergy; irreversibilities.

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