Modelado de la ecuación de Gompertz modificado para la producción de bioetanol en procesos fermentativos dentro de un reactor tipo batch a partir de mucílago de cacao CCN-51. Caso: Ecuador - Zona 6

Abstract

Cocoa mucilage is a waste of the cocoa industry that due to its content of sugars can be used as raw material in fermentative processes for the production of bioethanol. The objective of this research is to develop the mathematical model of the modified Gompertz equation to predict the production of bioethanol generated in the fermentation of cocoa mucilage CCN-51 with yeast of the Saccharomyces cerevisiae type, under optimal conditions of operation (pH, temperature, yeast concentration). The optimization was carried out by means of a complete factorial design 23 (two levels and three variables: temperature, pH and yeast concentration). The fermentation was carried out in a discontinuous bioreactor with stirring, where the production of ethanol was evaluated over time using the Winnick or Microdiffusion method. This process was modeled with the modified Gompertz equation, which describes the production of bioethanol. The optimal operating parameters were: 35 °C, pH of 4 and yeast concentration of 3 g/L, with a duration of the experiment of 59 hours. The parameters of the modified Gompertz equation with which we worked were: lag time of 2h, maximum bioethanol concentration of 22.0608 g/L and rpm of 1.2998 g/L*h. The correlation factor calculated between the experimental and modeled data for the modified Gompertz model was R2 = 0.8842.