Procesos

Currently, several heat integration techniques have been studied, e.g. HIDiC column, showing a diminution in energy consumption in relation to conventional distillation column. In this work, an approach for process intensification in distillation columns is studied by merging both reactive distillation and heat integrated distillation column principles, resulting in the heat integrated reactive distillation column (r-HIDiC). A simulation study has been performed in order to compare the performance of reactive distillation column and r-HIDiC column in the synthesis of tert-amyl methyl ether (TAME). It was found that due to internal energy integration, the r-HIDiC column achieves a better performance with energy saving around 8%. In addition, it can be seen that the possibility of r-HIDiC column to operate at different pressures between the rectifying and stripping sections permits to overcome separation limitations resulting from presence of azeotropes.

Currently, distillation columns consume a large amount of energy in petroleum and alcohol industry. This has led to the development of a new internal configuration in the distillation columns called Heat-Integrated Distillation Column (HIDiC). In this configuration the column is composed for two concentric sections called rectifying and stripping. The heat transfer is conducted from the rectifying section (which works at higher pressure and temperature) to the stripping section (which works at lower pressure and temperature) forming a fractionating column. The HIDiC offers great potential to reduce energy consumption compared to the conventional column. However, the complexity of the proposed configuration justifies the need of rigorous simulations that enable a better understanding of the column operation. In this work, the computational fluid dynamic (CFD) was used to study the heat transfer in a concentric stage of a HIDiC column. The results obtained by CFD simulation showed the internal heat transfer as a promissory configuration for decrease energy consumption in distillation processes.

Macroalgae are currently considered as a valuable source of biomass for producing a wide variety of products including cosmetics, medicines, pharmaceuticals, new materials based on biopolymers and biofuels. They produce unique secondary metabolites such as polysaccharides that are very useful in several applications. Agar, one of these polysaccharides, exhibits excellent rheological properties, moderate water resistance and high biodegradable, which allow it to be exploited commercially. Different routes for agar extraction have been studied with the aim of stablishing effective and profitable processes that include alkaline or acid pretreatments. In this paper, two routes for agar production from red macroalgae Gracilaria sp. were simulated: freeze-thaw (Route 1) and evaporation (Route 2) in order to determine the most suitable process from a techno-economic viewpoint. From simulation, it was found that both routes are possible to implement for agar production with the same properties. Nevertheless, Route 2 requires less energy and equipment than Route 1 because of the operating conditions for evaporating and 698 Ángel González-Delgado et al. freezing, respectively. Therefore, Route 2 presents lower fixed capital, operating and utilities costs, which mean a higher process profitability.

A coluna de destilação com integração interna de calor (CDIIC) apresenta um grande potencial na diminuição do consumo de energia em processos de destilação. Basicamente, é uma configuração concêntrica de coluna de destilação, onde a seção de retificação opera a maior pressão e temperatura, fazendo a roca e energia com a seção de esgotamento. Atualmente, a unidade industrial não é uma realidade, sendo assim uma grande quantidade de trabalhos uma necessidade para o desenvolvimento da unidade a grande escala. O presente trabalho estuda quarto diferentes configurações de coluna CDIIC (media, topo, fundo e total-a mesma quantidade de estágios nas duas seções) na mistura benzeno-tolueno fazendo uma comparação do consumo de energia em relação ao convencional. O presente estudo apresenta uma nova perspectiva na separação de processos fazendo uso do simulador Aspen One para o modelamento e obtenção das condições de operação e dados do consumo energético, as diferentes configurações apresenta...

Nanoparticles are materials with special properties that can be applied in different fields, such as medicine, engineering, food industry and cosmetics. The contributions regarding the synthesis of different types of nanoparticles have allowed researchers to determine a special group of nanoparticles with key characteristics for several applications. Magnetite nanoparticles (Fe3O4) have attracted a significant amount of attention due to their ability to improve the properties of polymeric materials. For this reason, the development of novel/emerging large scale processes for the synthesis of nanomaterials is a great and important challenge. In this work, an environmental assessment of the large scale production of magnetite via coprecipitation was carried out with the aim to evaluate its potential impact on the environment at a processing capacity of 806.87 t/year of magnetite nanoparticles. The assessment was performed using a computer-aided tool based on the Waste Reduction Algori...

Macroalgae have been one of the main source of raw material for different products involved in food technology, biotechnology, microbiology and medicine due to its abundance, diversity and economic value, in fact some of these are being used as a direct source of agar. There are different routes for agar extraction at industrial scale, so it is of great importance to determine economic viability of these in order to select the process that offers greater profitability under defined criteria. In this paper, an economic evaluation was performed to compare two routes for obtaining agar: freeze-thaw (Route 1) and evaporation (Route 2) considering to Colombia for plant location. The effect of raw material cost and plant location on profitability of both routes was also evaluated through sensibility analysis. From economic evaluation, it was found that these routes are possible in terms techno-economic; however, Route 2 has a higher profitability due to its lower fixed capital, operating and utilities costs.

Recently, exergy analysis has attracted great attention of the scientific community as an attractive tool for evaluating energetic efficiency of any process. In this work, the simulation of the amine treatment unit in a Latin-American refinery was performed in order to apply the exergy analysis tool to identify alternatives of improvement. The industrial amine treatment unit was simulated using Aspen plus software, which provided extended energy and mass balances. To calculate irreversibilities of the process and global exergy efficiencies per stages, the general methodological procedure of exergy analysis was used. To this end, physical and chemical exergies were found for compounds involved within the process. The values estimated for total irreversibilities, exergy of utilities, and exergy of wastes in the treatment of the sulfur-rich amine allowed us to analyze the stages that require reductions in waste generation and utility consumption. For a processing capacity of 72.08 t/h of rich amine, results revealed that the overall exergy efficiency was 83.81% and the total irreversibility was 1.69 × 105 MJ/h, where 23.6% corresponds to the total exergy by residues (3.98 × 104 MJ/h). The novel strategy to use exergy analysis for process optimization proved to be useful to detect critical stages and prioritize actions to improve.

The African palm is the main source of vegetable oil worldwide, representing about 29.60% of the total oil and fat production around the world. The rapid expansion of this sector has faced several concerns related to environmental and social aspects that have driven the search for sustainable alternatives. In this work, the inherent safety analysis and sustainability evaluation for the crude palm oil production process was performed using the inherent safety index (ISI) method and the sustainable weighted return on investment metric (SWROIM), respectively. The process was designed for a processing capacity of 30 t/h of palm bunches and under North-Colombian conditions. Three technical indicators were considered to evaluate the process sustainability including exergy efficiency, potential environmental impacts output (PEI output), and the total inherent safety index (ITI). The economic factor is directly considered since the SWROIM is an extension of the conventional return on invest...

Yam is a starchy tuber mainly used in food preparation but with high potential applications in other fields such as pharmaceutical and bioplastic production. Colombia is among the top twelve yam producing countries worldwide and ranked first in terms of yield of tons per hectare planted. Yam production has specifically been concentrated in the Caribbean region, which is why this tuber is very little known in the inland regions. In this study, we evaluated Simultaneous Saccharification and Fermentation (SSF) for bioethanol production from yam (Dioscorea rotundata) using Saccharomyces bayanus. Ethanol production technologies involve the fermentation and hydrolysis of consumable raw materials (i.e., sugar cane and corn) which are quite mature around the world. For this reason, the process under analysis combined three phases: 60 min of gelatinization, enzymatic hydrolysis (divided into 40 min of liquefaction with α-amylase and 20 min of saccharification with glucoamylase), and 27 h of ...

El poliestireno expandido (EPS) es un plástico de un solo uso, poco reciclable, que termina acumulándose en vertederos o espacios públicos, con los consecuentes problemas ambientales para las comunidades. Una alternativa para tratarlo son los solventes; sin embargo, este método se ha estudiado poco y los solventes más usados son nocivos para la salud o el medio ambiente. En este proyecto se estudió cómo la temperatura y la concentración influyen en la disolución de EPS con dos compuestos naturales: limoneno y aceite de eucalipto. Se compararon parámetros de solubilidad y se hicieron ensayos de laboratorio con residuos de EPS a los que se les aplicaron procesos de limpieza, molienda, disolución a distintas temperaturas (entre 21 y 50 °C) y concentraciones (1:10, 3:10, 1:2, 3:4, 1:1, 1.25:1 y 1.5:1) y recuperación de solventes. Se determinó que la viscosidad presenta un comportamiento exponencial a partir del 42 % de concentración, y a mayor temperatura, menor viscosidad y tiempo de d...

In this study, the inherent safety analysis of large-scale production of chitosan microbeads modified with TiO2 nanoparticles was developed using the Inherent Safety Index (ISI) methodology. This topology was structured based on two main stages: (i) Green-based synthesis of TiO2 nanoparticles based on lemongrass oil extraction and titanium isopropoxide (TTIP) hydrolysis, and (ii) Chitosan gelation and modification with nanoparticles. Stage (i) is divided into two subprocesses for accomplishing TiO2 synthesis, lemongrass oil extraction and TiO2 production. The plant was designed to produce 2033 t/year of chitosan microbeads, taking crude chitosan, lemongrass, and TTIP as the primary raw materials. The process was evaluated through the ISI methodology to identify improvement opportunity areas based on a diagnosis of process risks. This work used industrial-scale process inventory data of the analyzed production process from mass and energy balances and the process operating conditions...