Evaluación tecno-económica y ambiental de la producción de acetato de etilo por vía química y biológica

Abstract

Ethyl acetate is one of the most produced chemical compounds in industry, given its wide use as an organic solvent. Importations of this acetate reached 3.000 tonnes in Colombia for the year 2013. This work shows the production process of the ethyl acetate in two different pathways, a chemical and a biological (enzymatic) one. Techno-economic and environmental comparisons were performed for the synthesis using the commercial software Aspen Plus v8.2 (Aspen Technology, Inc., USA) for the technoeconomic evaluation and the Waste Reduction Algorithm of the Environmental Protection Agency of the EE.UU. (EPA) for the environmental assessment. As a result, a lower production cost was obtained for the chemical pathway (2,77 USD/kg) regarding the biologic (8,55 USD/kg). However, from an environmental perspective, the biological pathway presents better results given that the calculated environmental impact index shows a reduction of approximately 98% favoring the biological pathway. The biological pathway is considerably newer and therefore it requires further research, however, the offered reduction of the environmental impact is an incentive of its great potential and hence promotes the intensification of this pathway.