Exergetic Analysis of Bioethanol Production from Tunisian Waste Dates

Objective: This study aims at contributing to the area of sustainable bioethanol production system development. The main objective of this study is to thermodynamically evaluate a bioethanol production process from waste dates. Methods & Materials: To this end, several chemical engineering assessment tools have been simultaneously applied. These tools simulate the bioethanol production process using the SuperPro software in order to determine all the materials and energy exchanges. An exergy analysis is also carried out, based on the first and second laws of thermodynamics, in order to locate thermodynamic imperfections in the process. Results: The results obtained show that approximately 60% of the exergy fed to the process is recovered in the useful products (bioethanol and exhausted pulp used as feedstuff). The overall exergy destroyed in the process considered is about 377 kW which represents 7% of the exergy reaching the process. The distillation section, the most energy-intensive stage, constitutes the main contributor of exergy destruction, followed by the fermentation reactor with contributions of 47% and 33%, respectively.