Boreskov Institute of Catalysis of the Siberian Branch of Russian ...

OP-IV-10EXERGY ANALYSIS OF ENZYMATIC HYDROLYSIS REACTORSFOR TRANSFORMATION OF LIGNOCELLULOSIC BIOMASS TOBIOETHANOLK. Ojeda, C. Ramirez, V. KafarovResearch Center for the Sustainable Development in Industry and Energy,Department of Chemical Engineering, Industrial University of SantanderFax: +57-7-6350540, Bucaramanga, Colombia. E-mail: cisyc@uis.edu.coIntroductionThe use of lignocellulosic biomass is going to be one of the best ways to increase yieldsin the production of environmental friendly fuels from renewable sources. The biomasstreatment processes with several alternatives such as acid hydrolysis, saccharification, aciddehydration, and especially enzymatic hydrolysis, have shown promising results and havegenerated great expectations and investigations with the objective of develop this field. Inrecent years, research has been focused on improving various stages of production ofbioethanol and other added-value products through enzymatic hydrolysis, however, the costsof this technology have generated great interest to find out optimal type of enzyme catalyticreactors to get an increase in performance, productivity and energy efficiency, while reducingthe costs of the process 1 .In this work the concept of exergy analysis has been applied to choose the best type of oenzymatic hydrolysis reactors of lignocellulosic biomass to produced ethanol fuel fromrenewable resources. An analysis of the efficiency of exergy in tubular and continuous stirredtankreactors was made in the process simulator PRO II Simsci, in order to analyze the effectof changes in the dead-state in the efficiency of each of these systems to production ofenvironmental friendly fuels.Enzymatic Hydrolysis:The enzymatic hydrolysis of cellulosic materials by means of cellulase enzymes is one ofthe most promising advances in order to obtain products of great economic importance. Thisis a process catalyzed by a group of enzymes –cellulases– that are a mixture of differentenzyme activities whose joint action produces the degradation of cellulose 3-4 . The reaction ofdegradation of cellulose to glucose by action of enzymes is shown below:( C⎯endoglucanaseβ −glucosidase6H10O5)2n⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯→nC12H22O11⎯⎯ ⎯⎯ →2cellulosecelobiosenCH6 12Glu coseO6158