Alvaro Orjuela

A novel process for recovery of fermentation-derived succinic acid: Process design and economic analysis

Recovery and purification of organic acids produced in fermentation constitutes a significant fraction of total production cost. In this paper, the design and economic analysis of a process to recover succinic acid (SA) via dissolution and acidification of succinate salts in ethanol, followed by reactive distillation to form succinate esters, is presented. Process simulation was performed for a range of plant capacities (13-55 million kg/yr SA) and SA fermentation titers (50-100 kg/m(3)). Economics were evaluated for a recovery system installed within an existing fermentation facility producing succinate salts at a cost of

Process Intensification by Reactive Distillation

0.66/kg SA. For a SA processing capacity of 54.9 million kg/yr and a titer of 100 kg/m(3) SA, the model predicts a capital investment of

An Integrated Methodology for Emulsified Cosmetic Product Formulation Using Integer Programming with Logical Constraints

75 million and a net processing cost of

Potential Opportunities and Challenges for Research Collaboration with Latin America in Agriculture and Food Science

1.85 per kg SA. Required selling price of diethyl succinate for a 30% annual return on investment is

Dynamic Simulation and Optimisation of an Industrial Process for Tributyl Citrate Production

1.57 per kg.

A novel process for recovery of fermentation-derived succinic acid

Reactive distillation stands out as a successful example of a process intensification technology for enhanced chemical manufacture. After almost a century of development, it has achieved a high degree of maturity in terms of design capabilities, the availability of commercial suppliers of hardware and software, and a large variety of processes effectively implemented at the industrial scale. Based upon an extensive review of the classical and recent literature on reactive distillation, this chapter briefly describes the context in which the technology was developed, its current status, and the expected areas for progress in the near future. In addition, the intensification principles behind the operation, its fundamentals, constrains, design methodologies, the optimization approaches, and the control strategies are discussed with fair detail. Finally, a case study on the ethyl acetate production via esterification of acetic acid with ethanol by reactive distillation is presented. It this example, a complete process synthesis procedure is described, from the conceptual design all the way to the process optimization.

Kinetics of mixed succinic acid/acetic acid esterification with Amberlyst 70 ion exchange resin as catalyst

This work proposes the incorporation of heuristic knowledge into an optimization-based methodology to formulate cosmetic emulsions. Heuristics regarding choice of ingredients and their amounts are modelled as algebraic restrictions and if needed translation of logical conditions to algebra is performed. The more heuristics included, the more limited the design space becomes. Through integer cuts, ranked candidate solutions may then be generated. A case study of a hair conditioner is presented, being generated tens of solutions significantly better than a known prescription.

Mixed Succinic Acid/Acetic Acid Esterification with Ethanol by Reactive Distillation.

UCR::Vicerrectoria de Docencia::Ciencias Agroalimentarias::Facultad de Ciencias Agroalimentarias::Escuela de Tecnologia de Alimentos

Diethyl succinate synthesis by reactive distillation

Abstract Demand of free-phthalate plasticizers has increased due to the concern about the negative effect that phthalate compounds could have on the human health, and because the market trends have been pushing for bio-based products consumption. Tributyl citrate has been identified as a functional alternative for phthalate plasticizers, however there are still challenges regarding the industrial production in a semi-batch process, mainly associated with large excess of reactants, high energy and processing costs. In order to improve the process performance, this work developed a dynamic model a reaction-separation process, which was contrasted with industrial data and optimized using gPROMS®.