Techno-economic analysis of extraction-based separation systems for acetone, butanol, and ethanol recovery and purification

BACKGROUND: Dual extraction, high-temperature extraction, mixture extraction, and oleyl alcohol extraction have been proposed in the literature for acetone, butanol, and ethanol (ABE) production. However, energy and economic evaluation under similar assumptions of extraction-based separation systems are necessary. Hence, the new process proposed in this work, direct steam distillation (DSD), for regeneration of high-boiling extractants was compared with several extraction-based separation systems. METHODS: The evaluation was performed under similar assumptions through simulation in Aspen Plus V7.3(®) software. Two end distillation systems (number of non-ideal stages between 70 and 80) were studied. Heat integration and vacuum operation of some units were proposed reducing the energy requirements. RESULTS: Energy requirement of hybrid processes, substrate concentration of 200 g/l, was between 6.4 and 8.3 MJ-fuel/kg-ABE. The minimum energy requirements of extraction-based separation systems, feeding a water concentration in the substrate equivalent to extractant selectivity, and ideal assumptions were between 2.6 and 3.5 MJ-fuel/kg-ABE, respectively. The efficiencies of recovery systems for baseline case and ideal evaluation were 0.53–0.57 and 0.81–0.84, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: The main advantages of DSD were the operation of the regeneration column at atmospheric pressure, the utilization of low-pressure steam, and the low energy requirements of preheating. The in situ recovery processes, DSD, and mixture extraction with conventional regeneration were the approaches with the lowest energy requirements and total annualized costs. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s40643-017-0142-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.