E. B. Moraes

Molecular Distillation Process for Recovering Biodiesel and Carotenoids from Palm Oil

Carotenoids and biodiesel from palm oil were recovered through a process involving neutralization and transesterification of palm oil followed by molecular distillation of the esters. The concentrated obtained contains more than 30,000 ppm of carotenoids and the distillate contains above 95% of light-colored biodiesel. The experimental data were obtained from falling film and centrifugal molecular distillators. It can be seen that each one has its own characteristics, which are a function of the operating temperatures and of the tendency of the material thermal decomposition. These characteristics can determine the type of equipment to be used, since they have different operating conditions. The experimental results were compared to the ones from simulations using the mathematical modeling for the falling film and centrifugal distillators developed.

Evaluation of Tocopherol Recovery Through Simulation of Molecular Distillation Process

DISMOL simulator was used to determine the best possible operating conditions to guide, in future studies, experimental works. This simulator needs several physical-chemical properties and often it is very difficult to determine them because of the complexity of the involved components. Their determinations must be made through correlations and/or predictions, in order to characterize the system and calculate it. The first try is to have simulation results of a system that later can be validated with experimental data. To implement, in the simulator, the necessary parameters of complex systems is a difficult task. In this work, we aimed to determe these properties in order to evaluate the tocopherol (vitamin E) recovery using a DISMOL simulator. The raw material used was the crude deodorizer distillate of soya oil. With this procedure, it is possible to determine the best operating conditions for experimental works and to evaluate the process in the separation of new systems, analyzing the profiles obtained from these simulations for the falling film molecular distillator.

Evaluation of liquid-liquid extraction process for separating acrylic acid produced from renewable sugars

In this article, the separation and the purification of the acrylic acid produced from renewable sugars were studied using the liquid-liquid extraction process. Nonrandom two-liquids and universal quasi-chemical models and the prediction method universal quasi-chemical functional activity coefficients were used for generating liquid-liquid equilibrium diagrams for systems made up of acrylic acid, water, and solvents (diisopropyl ether, isopropyl acetate, 2-ethyl hexanol, and methyl isobutyl ketone) and the results were compared with available liquid-liquid equilibrium experimental data. Aspen Plus (Aspen Technology, Inc., version 2004.1) software was used for equilibrium and process calculations. High concentration of acrylic acid was obtained in this article using diisopropyl ether as solvent.

Simulation and Optimization of a Supercritical Extraction Process for Recovering Provitamin A

In this work, a simulation procedure of a supercritical extraction process was developed through the use of the commercial simulator HYSYSTM (Hyprotech Ltd.), adapting the existing units to the operating conditions typical of the supercritical extraction process. The objective is to recover provitamin A (β-carotene) from palm oil (esterified) using carbon dioxide/ethanol as the supercritical mixed solvent. This example characterizes the problem for recovering high added value product from natural sources, as the palm oil, which is desired by the market. Owing to the fact that esterified palm oil is a complex mixture, made by several components, in order to characterize this system in the simulator, it was necessary to create hypothetical components using the UNIFAC (universal function-group activity coefficients model) group contribution, because they are not present in a conventional database and, then, their physical properties must be estimated and/or predicted before the simulation. The optimization was carried out in each simulation for each equipment, in terms of operating conditions (temperature and pressure), in order to obtain the maximum recovery of carotenes. According to the results, it was possible to concentrate carotenes through two cycles of supercritical extraction with high yield. Furthermore, ethyl esters (biodiesel) were also obtained, as a byproduct of the proposed process, which can also be used as an alternative fuel, with the important characteristic that it is renewable.

Evaluation of the batch distillation process in the ethanol production

Abstract Experimental data and simulations in Aspen Plus® for the batch distillation process were obtained from an ethanol/water mixture. The simulation was carried out in order to verify the effectiveness of the calculations for the batch distillation process for recovering ethanol, using a plate column. The experimental data were taken from a packed batch distillation column. The separation of ethanol/water mixture was studied at different reflux ratios. The ethanol was quantified through a gas chromatography analyses. The simulation and the experimental data were performed considering the ethanol concentration in the wine that comes from the sugarcane fermentation. It was verified that the higher ethanol concentration was obtained in one hour of distillation and the accumulate ethanol concentration was above to 80% (mole) when operated at constant reflux. So, it is possible to obtain high yields and concentrations of ethanol in a short time.

Prediction And Estimation Techniques For Modeling Pervaporation Process

Abstract In this work a new mathematical model was proposed for pervaporation process, considering a predictive model for the diffusion coefficient. Through the model equations, a simulator called PERVAP was developed to evaluate the performance of the pervaporation process. For the model validation, the separation of the azeotropic mixture ethanol/water was studied through simulation using a hydrophilic membrane, polyetherimide (PEI), using experimental data obtained from literature. The prediction of the diffusion coefficient was carried out considering the free-volume theory and the parameters were determined from pure component and polymer properties. Group contribution method was also used to predict the binary interaction parameters between the components and the polymer. The proposed model presented good agreement with experimental data, allowing its application for separating other azeotropic systems and, also, for studying the effects of process variables.

Comparing centrifugal and falling film molecular stills using reflux and cascade for fine chemical separations

Abstract Molecular distillation is an important separation process that uses high vacuum and low temperatures. The molecular distillation can present, in some cases, reduced power of separation using just one stage of distillation. So, it becomes itself essential the use of a sequence of molecular distillators. The objective of this work is to compare the performance of molecular distillators using systems with reflux and cascade with the palm oil system, in order to concentrate carotenes.

Evaluation of pervaporation process for recovering a key orange juice flavour compound: Modeling and simulation

Abstract During fruit juice processing, charaeteristie flavour components are usually lost as consequence of the heating process. Membrane separation processes are considered as a promising alternative for this issue, e.g., in orange juice industry, an important agro industrial chain in Brazilian economy. Ethyl butyrate (EB) is one of the fresh orange flavour key contributors. Pervaporation is an attractive technology for processing thermal sensitive compounds. This membrane process is based on a selective transport of a liquid feed mixture through a selective polymeric or ceramic membrane. In this work, the pervaporation performance was simulated for recovering EB from a diluted binary aqueous mixture using a PDMS (poly(dimethylsiloxane)) hydrophobic membrane. Innovative preliminary process results obtained using predicted POMS (poly(octylmethylsiloxane)) properties are also presented. A FORTRAN simulator named PERVAP based on an essentially predictive mathematical model was applied in this work.

Strategy and mathematical development for scale-up of molecular distillators for recovering carotenoids from palm oil

Molecular distillation is a powerful method of separation, which happen at extremely low pressures and, therefore, at reduced temperatures. Consequently, molecular distillation finds usefulness in the separation and purification of materials with molecules of high molecular weight as well as of those that are thermally sensitive as vitamins A, E, K, many pharmaceutical intermediates, oils of vegetable origin, etc. Studies for recovering carotenoids from palm oil were developed in the LDPS (FEQ-UNICAMP) through molecular distillation (modeling, simulation and experiments)-( Batistella and Maciel, 1998 ; Batistella, 1999) . All the studies, however, have involved distillators with dimensions in laboratory scale, without consideration of distillators with industrial dimensions. Aiming designing molecular distillators with industrial dimensions starting from the simulation of a reduced one or even establishing an operating condition starting from a smaller equipment, a methodology was developed looking for an easy and fast form for scaling-up.