Hydrothermal treatment of vinasse

Loading...
Thumbnail Image

URL

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Insinööritieteiden korkeakoulu | Master's thesis

Date

2017-12-11

Department

Major/Subject

Energy Technology

Mcode

K3007

Degree programme

Master’s Programme in Energy Technology (EEN)

Language

en

Pages

66+10

Series

Abstract

Vinasse is a by-product obtained from the distillation of ethanol from molasses from sugarcane. Due to its characteristics, such as high organic and moisture content, it is a potential source for fuel production. The thesis presents a techno-economic assessment for supercritical water gasification of the vinasse for the production of liquid fuels. The main goals of this work are the process modeling of a complete plant layout on Aspen Plus for supercritical water gasification of vinasse and the evaluation of the economic feasibility and profitability of the process compared to other bio-fuels plants. The process includes four main process blocks: supercritical water gasification, gas cleaning, Fischer-Tropsch process and Product separation. Different scenarios were considered to optimize the heat exchanger network of the plant. The feasibility of the process was then evaluated in terms of thermal efficiency and minimum selling price of the products. The plant recorded a minimum selling price of 360 euro per MWh with a carbon recovery of ~14% in the product and a thermal efficiency of ~21%. What emerges from the study is that the process is energetically self sufficient, although it is not economically feasible due to the high production costs.

Description

Supervisor

Järvinen, Mika

Thesis advisor

De Blasio, Cataldo
Magdeldin, Mohamed

Keywords

vinasse, supercritical water gasification, Fischer-Tropsch, fractionation, techno-economic assessment

Other note

Citation