Ethanol Production by fermentation

Ethanol Production by Fermentation

This project is to design ethanol production plant from vegetable and fruit wastes fermentation process. Ethanol is mostly used as fuel and has become an alternative of renewable energy source now-a-days. The production of ethanol is growing day by day at a great extent for its wide range application and demand. As the supply and price of oil and gas worldwide has become a major problem, ethanol is taking place as an alternative. It is an eco-friendly alternative to petroleum-based fuel as it has fewer greenhouse gas emissions. Worldwide ethanol production as fuel reached 32.35 billion gallons in 2012. Ethanol is obtained by the fermentation process where the sugar content in vegetable and fruit juices are transformed into alcohol using yeast.

Reactions :

C12H22O11+H2O ----> 2 C6H12O6

C6H12O6              ----->2 C2H5OH + 2 CO2

Depending on the extraction process of vegetable and fruit wastes from different sources, composition can be varied. In this project, the raw material compositions can be assumed as :

Water (H2O)                    = 83.2783 mole %

Sucrose (C12H22O11)    = 16.7217 mole %

Total mass flowrate         = 200 kg/day

Mass fraction                    :0.2075wt% of H20 and 0.7925wt% of C6H12O6