Modelado y simulación de procesos involucrados en la producción de bioetanol a partir de suero de leche.

Abstract

The present work studies the behavior of the fermentation process to obtain ethanol from pretreated whey with Saccharomyces cerevisiae, by the simulation in SuperPro Designer V8.5. The potential of this dairy residue as a carbon source is described, as well as the importance of evaluating its behavior against a commercial yeast strain. The fermentative and kinetic parameters selected for the base line simulation were compiled from experimental studies and investigations focused on determining optimal fermentation conditions. By changing variables such as glucose concentration for enrichment medium, microbial kinetics models, and temperature modality, a one-way sensitivity analysis was performed for the execution of various simulation runs. In the line, under conditions of pH 4.5, 36 [°C] and 200 [rpm], a maximum ethanol production of 19.9 [g/L] was obtained in a medium with 50 [g/L] of glucose after 71[h]. From the sensitivity analyses, favorable responses were obtained to changes in the concentration of the medium, since a favored ethanol production was evidenced in media enriched with glucose due to the affinity that the yeast possesses for its consumption. On the other hand, the parallel consumption of carbon sources and their yield in ethanol production were compared and was reported the influence of the change in both the kinetic model and the substrate inhibition model, and the isothermal process for the adiabatic model.