Selection of eco-efficient downstream distillation sequences for acetone-butanol-ethanol (ABE) purification from in situ product recovery system

Abstract Integrating the acetone-butanol-ethanol fermentation with pervaporation or gas stripping for in situ product recovery is considered as an effective way for biobutanol production, and the following downstream distillation sequences have been extensively investigated. Whereas, there are still no comprehensive comparison of the reported distillation processes in sight of the techno-economic feasibility. In this study, three alternative distillation sequences that contains a decanter and recycle loops are selected and compared by steady-state simulation. ABE condensates collected by ISPR, with different solvent concentrations and constituents, are considered as the feed stream of distillation. The impact of ABE ratio on energy consumption and techno-economics of the selected distillation sequences are analyzed. Results indicate the separation performances, including the energy requirement and economics, are highly influenced by the distillation sequence. Compared with other Scenarios, when feeding the extreme ABE constituents within the confidence interval, the sequence that consisted of three columns and a decanter with two recycle loops exhibits the lower energy requirement (7.99 MJ/kg) and TAC (4.15 × 106 US $/yr). The current work guides to the designation of suitable ISPR-distillation process in future works.