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.