SIMULATION AND TECHNICAL ECONOMICS ANALYSIS OF THE PRODUCTION OF BIOETHANOL FROM THE SACARINE AND LIGNOCELLULOSIC FRACTIONS OF SWEET SORGHUM

Abstract

Sugarcane is the main raw-material for ethanol production in Brazil, although it has restrictions on its production cycle. Thus, sweet sorghum, could be seen as an alternative during the sugarcane off season. The simulation for production of first and second generation ethanol from sweet sorghum, in an integrated process, was executed, using the software Aspen HYSYS. For the second generation, the bagasse of sorghum must be pre-treated. In this work, the pretreatments hydrothermal, dilute acid and steam explosion were evaluated with an integrated production and the costs were estimated by the economic analysis and the results were US$ 1,205, US $ 1,244 and US $ 1,367, per kilo of ethanol, respectively. By the parametric variation, it was observed that ethanol production is economically viable for larger quantities of processed material. The lowest production value was US$ 0.987/kg ethanol, using the hydrothermal pretreatment, processing 650 tons/h of sorghum.