A Sustainable Ethanol Distillation System

Sustainability

Yuelei Yang¹  Kevin Boots² 

[1] Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science, University of Ontario Institute of Technology, Oshawa, ON L1H 7K4, Canada;

关键词: ethanol;    heat exchanger;    distillation;    waste heat recovery;    fruit and vegetable waste;   

DOI  :  10.3390/su4010092

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

The discarded fruit and vegetable waste from the consumer and retailer sectors provide a reliable source for ethanol production. In this paper, an ethanol distillation system has been developed to remove the water contents from the original wash that contains only around 15% of the ethanol. The system has an ethanol production capacity of over 100,000 liters per day. It includes an ethanol condenser, a wash pre-heater, a main exhaust heat exchanger as well as a fractionating column. One unique characteristic of this system is that it utilizes the waste heat rejected from a power plant to vaporize the ethanol, thus it saves a significant amount of energy and at the same time reduces the pollution to the environment.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2012 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.