Modelling And Analysis Of A Soybean Biorefinery For The Production Of Refined Oil, Biodiesel And Different Types Of Flours

Soybean crushing and refining facilities, besides producing oil and meal, can also further process these products to generate energy or other products with commercial value. Therefore, these facilities are good candidates for a biorefinery concept application. From the degummed oil obtained after the extraction and degumming of soybean oil, there is the possibility of producing refined oil or biodiesel. From the meal also obtained from the extraction, it is possible to make soy protein concentrates (SPC) or soy protein isolates (SPI). For this reason, the aim of this work is to model a soybean crushing, refining and biodiesel production facility. For that, SuperPro Designer v. 9.0, a process design commercial software, was used with production process data collected from the literature. From the modelled process, it was possible to observe that yields from biodiesel or refined oil production are almost equal, but refined oil results in less residues generation and demands less energy. As for SPC and SPI production, SPI results in lower yields (similar to 44% lower) and produces more residues when compared to SPC (similar to 37-fold more). In addition, the model provides flexibility by varying the amount of raw material that can be diverted for the production of different products, so the production process can be adapted to changes in demands that occur in the market.