Systematic Design of Biorefinery Downstream Processes
Downstream processing of biofuels and bio-based chemicals often represents the bottleneck for the economic sustainable development of new processes. It is also a challenging problem for process synthesis and optimization, due to the intrinsic nonideal the
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Systematic Design of Biorefinery Downstream Processes Michele Corbetta, Ignacio E. Grossmann, Carlo Pirola and Flavio Manenti
Abstract Downstream processing of biofuels and bio-based chemicals often represents the bottleneck for the economic sustainable development of new processes. It is also a challenging problem for process synthesis and optimization, due to the intrinsic nonideal thermodynamics of the liquid mixtures derived from the (bio)chemical conversion of biomass. In this Chapter, a recent mathematical framework is outlined for the structural and parameter optimization of process flowsheets with rigorous and detailed models. The optimization problem is formulated within the Generalized Disjunctive Programming (GDP) framework and the solution of the reformulated MINLP problem is approached with a decomposition strategy based on the Outer-Approximation algorithm. At first, the mathematical formulation and the numerical implementation are outlined. In the second portion of the Chapter, several validation examples in the field of biorefineries are proposed spanning from the economic optimization of single distillation columns, the dewatering task of diluted bio-mixtures, up to the distillation sequencing with simultaneous mixed-integer design of each distillation column for a quaternary mixture in the presence of azeotropes.
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Introduction and State of the Art
The renewed interest in the field of distillation has been recently promoted by the consistent research on biomass conversion technologies to biofuels and bio-based chemicals. These technologies are based on (bio)chemical reactors that produce M. Corbetta (✉) ⋅ F. Manenti Dipartimento di Chimica, Materiali e Ingegneria Chimica “Giulio Natta”, Politecnico di Milano, P.zza L. Da Vinci 32, 20133 Milan, Italy e-mail: [email protected] I.E. Grossmann Department of Chemical Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University, 5000 Forbes Avenue, 15213 Pittsburgh, PA, USA C. Pirola Dipartimento di Chimica, Università degli Studi di Milano, Via Golgi 19, 20133 Milan, Italy © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2017 G.M. Kopanos et al. (eds.), Advances in Energy Systems Engineering, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-42803-1_23
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highly diluted aqueous solutions. The downstream processing of those mixtures usually involves distillation, leading to high operating costs due to the high heat of vaporization of water (Chen 2009; Xiu and Zeng 2008). For this reason, attempts to optimize and thermally integrate the purification step (Ahmetovic et al. 2010; Dias et al. 2009; Karuppiah et al. 2008) result in a relevant lowering of the production costs that reduces the economic gap with respect to cheaper fossil-based products (Hermann and Patel 2007; Sauer et al. 2008). In addition, the optimization of this type of downstream processes, as opposed to hydrocarbon distillation, involves highly nonideal liquid mixtures that demand rigorous thermodynamic models. In this context, process simulators offer a reliable and rigorous modeling environment t
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