Dynamic study of the integrated evaporation and ethanol fermentation stages of a sugarcane biorefinery using emso software

Brazil is one of the world leaders in ethanol production, which uses sugarcane as feedstock. The production of second generation ethanol from sugarcane bagasse is still under development, but it is a general consensus that this process must be integrated to the consolidated first generation ethanol production one. Although there is much research on the integrated process, most works in this field are devoted to assess the steady-state process. The knowledge of the process dynamics has an essential role in its efficient operation, economics, variability, safety, and control. In this study two main stages of the ethanol production, namely, continuous multiple-effect evaporation and batch fermentation, were coupled using phenomenological dynamic model. The dynamic model was implemented in EMSO (Environment for Modeling, Simulation, and Optimization), and simulations were performed to analyse the dynamic behaviour of this integrated system. A disturbance was applied on the evaporators feed sugar concentration and its dynamic response was analysed. The last evaporator response stabilized after 32 minutes and the fermentation system after about 7 hours.