A new distillation plant for neutral alcohol production

• New distillation plant for high quality bioethanol production.
• Simulations considering 19 components on fermented must (wine).
• Use of experimental design technique.
• Experimental validation of computation tools.
• Rigorous study of vapor–liquid equilibrium of wine compounds.

This work aims to investigate industrial plants for neutral alcohol production, a special kind of alcohol used in the fine chemical, pharmaceutical and beverage industries, having a high potential as feedstock for renewable chemicals production. Operational and constructive changes in typical hydrated bioethanol plants were investigated by computational simulation, aiming to develop a new plant for neutral alcohol production. The wine was represented by a standard solution containing water, ethanol and 17 congeners. The results were compared with a typical Brazilian plant and a literature reported plant. The new suggested installation was more efficient than the traditional plants, since the steam consumption was, at most, 45.0% lower, ethanol recovery as neutral alcohol was, at most, 5.0% higher and the number of trays required for purifying bioethanol was also much lower. Furthermore, byproducts generated from the neutral alcohol distillation were used for producing fuel bioethanol.