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Overall process analysis for on-farm production of bioethanol and protein from leguminous crops
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Insinööritieteiden korkeakoulu |
Master's thesis
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IA3025
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en
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92 + 5
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Abstract
One of the main challenges the current world must face is feeding its population. Focusing on the European Union, one of the commodities that suffer from a significant imbalance between local/regional production and consumption is high-protein crops, such as legumes. The advantages of decreasing import dependency are obvious, but a successful commercial production of selected high-value components from grain legumes - i.e. protein concentrate for direct food or feed use - will only be possible along with the exploitation of all fractions of the plant. At this point, the term “biorefinery” appears. “Peas on Earth” is a concept that aims to enhance the yield of feasible product outputs from leguminous crops, offering an opportunity for European farmers to make legumes more available as part of their crop rotation. The outputs of the proposed biorefinery are protein concentrate, sugar (and/or bioethanol) and biomass briquettes. In order to commercialize this technology, detailed calculations on product mass balance, energy use of the biorefinery and heat integration opportunities are required. The objective of this work was, therefore, to supply all this information. This was performed by describing, building and using a simulation model on Aspen Plus that calculates mass and energy balances of the overall process. Pinch analysis was chosen as the methodology for heat integration purposes. The results of the simulations provided the annual production of the plant and a considerably realistic basis for energy demand estimation and for gross profit calculations. The heat integration analysis indicated potential heat savings by transferring heat between specific process streams.