Albarelli J., Ensinas A., Silva M., 2012, Combined First and Second Generation Ethanol Production: Analysis of Supercritical Hydrolysis, Chemical Engineering Transactions, 29, 1165-1170.
Supercritical hydrolysis of lignocellulosic materials for ethanol production represents a new trend in the sugarcane sector that needs evaluation. In this work, the commercial software Aspen Plus® was used to simulate ethanol and electricity production at a conventional autonomous distillery processing 500 tonnes of sugarcane per hour and a steam based cogeneration system. The production of lignocellulosic ethanol was simulated using the surplus bagasse produced at the autonomous distillery after thermal integration. The second generation ethanol production was studied with two cases: the enzymatic hydrolysis (Case 1) and supercritical hydrolysis (Case 2) considering in both cases a prior pre-treatment with liquid hot water. For cogeneration system besides bagasse it was considered the use of sugarcane trash as fuel. All data necessary for the simulation was obtained from the literature. Case 1 presented the higher ethanol production, increasing the overall ethanol in almost 13 %. Case 2 required a large amount of energy, to fulfil the thermal requirements of the process and 117 % more bagasse than the available after milling would be necessary. Even accomplishing to supply the energy necessary to the process, Case 2 showed ethanol production much lower than enzymatic hydrolysis.
