no. 13 (diciembre 2015)

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Aplicación de la termodinámica en la síntesis óptima de procesos químicos y biotecnológicos
(Universidad de Cuenca, 2015-12) Forero, Héctor; García, Carlos; Cardona, Carlos
Biomass appears as a promising alternative to produce environmentally friendly compounds with competitive advantages over non-renewable compounds. Bio-furfural is one of these compounds, and currently has become one of the most important and commonly used worldwide compounds. Alternatively, bio-furfural has been used as a building block to develop chemical platforms in order to produce some other compounds of industrial interest. This work implements the thermodynamic analysis of furfural production in a biorefinery from lignocellulosic biomass. Techno-economic, energy and exergy are evaluated in order to determine the economic and energy viability of this process. As a result, the production of furfural from sugarcane bagasse under the biorefinery concept has high economic profitability, besides other products can be used to increase the economic performance of the biorefinery. Additionally, plant or process sections with higher energy requirements and irreversibilities are determined. Alkaline and enzymatic hydrolysis were the processes with the highest irreversibilities, however, the plants for furfural and ethanol production has the highest energy needs related to the reaction and separation stage, respectively.