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• Boots, K
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Sustainability 2012, 4(1), 92-105; doi:10.3390/su4010092

Article

A Sustainable Ethanol Distillation System

Yuelei Yang* , Kevin Boots and Dan Zhang

Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science, University of Ontario Institute of Technology, Oshawa, ON L1H 7K4, Canada

* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.

Received: 2 November 2011; in revised form: 19 December 2011 / Accepted: 20 December 2011 / Published: 4 January 2012

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Manufacturing)

Download PDF Full-Text [741 KB, uploaded 4 January 2012 16:26 CET]

Abstract: The discarded fruit and vegetable waste from the consumer and retailer sectors provide a reliable source for ethanol production. In this paper, an ethanol distillation system has been developed to remove the water contents from the original wash that contains only around 15% of the ethanol. The system has an ethanol production capacity of over 100,000 liters per day. It includes an ethanol condenser, a wash pre-heater, a main exhaust heat exchanger as well as a fractionating column. One unique characteristic of this system is that it utilizes the waste heat rejected from a power plant to vaporize the ethanol, thus it saves a significant amount of energy and at the same time reduces the pollution to the environment.

Keywords: ethanol; heat exchanger; distillation; waste heat recovery; fruit and vegetable waste

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