DYNAMIC SIMULATION OF EVAPORATORS FOR APPLICATION IN BIOREFINERIES
Maria Jimena Ferreira Quagliata March/2015
Advisors: Argimiro Resende Secchi Evaristo Chalbaud Biscaia Jr.Department: Chemical Engineering
Brazil is the second largest producer of ethanol, what justifies the great national interest in modeling and simulation of biorefineries, with goals from improving the operating conditions and reducing energy consumption to the development of new processes. This work is focused on biorefinery producing ethanol, based on fermentation, in the step of juice concentration by evaporation. The use of evaporators is widespread in national biorefineries. We were carried out modeling of the thermodynamic properties of the complex mixtures involved in the process and the mathematical modeling of flash and Robert evaporators considering monophasic and biphasic flows within the evaporator tubes. Multiple effect evaporators systems have also been simulated and optimized using the EMSO simulator. A sensitive analysis of multiple evaporators systems, and the consequent demand for optimum operation conditions was performed. It was found that the best operating conditions of each evaporator, for a system of four evaporators connected in cocurrent order, reduced the steam consumption by 26 % compared with the normal operation of the system.