Performance evaluation of microfiltration and centrifugation for separating suspended solids from fermented molasses solution

Articles in Press

Document Type : Research Article

Authors

1 School of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering, Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran

2 Energy Storage Group, Institute of Mechanics, Iranian Space Research Center

Abstract

Ethanol is considered as a renewable fuel that can be produced via fermentation of sugarcane molasses. Fermented solution that is fed to the distillation column has suspended solid content that tend to block distillation trays leading to low ethanol recovery. In this study, performances of microfiltration and centrifugation processes were investigated for separation of suspended solids from the fermented solution of sugarcane molasses. Filtration process using ceramic filter under pressure difference of 1, 2, 3, and 4 bars were studied. Based on the results of this study, the overall filtration process can be divided into three stages of pore blocking, cake filtration, and cake layer compression which were more pronounced as pressure difference across filter media increased. In addition, increasing pressure difference across filter caused a sharp decrease in permeate flux due to faster pore blocking and higher turbidity removal, 96.99% due to cake filtration, and compaction of cake layer. Comparison of curve fitted experimental data and blocking models showed that the full cake model had the best fit with the average absolute relative error (AARE) of 0.112. Further, in this study, experimental design was used to optimize the operating parameters of centrifugation for separation and removal of suspended solids from fermented solution. Single complete and complete-standard models among blocking models had the best fit for filtration after centrifugation under optimal operating conditions that corresponds to filtration pressure difference of 4 bars. The measured data showed that the permeate volume in centrifugation plus filtration increased about threefold compared to filtration alone, although the turbidity removal decreased slightly from 96.99 to 89.78%.

Keywords

Main Subjects

Iranian Journal of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering

Articles in Press, Accepted Manuscript
Available Online from 22 May 2023

Files

Share

How to cite

Statistics