Abstract
Biobutanol is one of the most preferable alternative fuels because of its superior fuel properties compared to other biofuels. In recent years, biobutanol production through isopropanol (IPA)-butanol-ethanol (IBE) fermentation has gotten more attention than acetone-butanol-ethanol (ABE) fermentation. However, the downstream separation process of this production is very energy intensive due to the several azeotropes. In this study, an energy-efficient process configuration including a reactive distillation column is proposed to break the azeotropes. In the proposed configuration, water present in the azeotropic mixture is consumed by a water-ethylene oxide (EO) reaction. Steady-state results show that the proposed configuration provides a 30% decrease in energy consumption and a 26.7% reduction in total annual cost (TAC) compared to the configurations in the literature, while ethylene glycol is obtained as a by-product besides the biobutanol of 99.5% purity. Additionally, two plantwide control structures are developed, and the dynamic controllability of the configuration is examined. Dynamic results illustrate that a robust control is provided with the proposed control structure 2 (CS2) when it is tested against disturbances in feed flowrate and feed composition.
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