SIMULATION, ANALYSIS AND EVALUATION OF FERMENTATION TEMPERATURE IN AN IN SITU GAS STRIPPING FERMENTATION PROCESS
Several alcoholic fermentation problems are overcome when the fermentation step is coupled to a continuous ethanol process removal. Gas stripping technique presents itself as a continuous ethanol process removal that requires no membrane or expensive chemicals. In this context, the simulation of a gas stripping fermentation process was carried out using ASPEN PLUS®, in order to evaluate the ethanol separation process behavior related to different fermentation temperatures. Initially, a case study was performed, where a sugar stream at 30% wt was fed to a reactor operating at temperature of 34°C with 7 L/min of CO2 gas flow rate. In this simulation 67 % of ethanol was stripped, which allowed ethanol concentration to be kept below threshold of toxicity. The results shown that high ethanol recoveries were reached as high as the temperature employed. Nonetheless, the temperature range studied was limited by yeast behavior, so, in practice, only narrow temperature ranges could be applied.