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Paper 20Th World Energy Congress Rome 2007 BTL: a solution to increase energy efficiency in the Brazilian alcohol business 1 Dr. Eduardo Falabella Souza-Aguiar Coordinator - GTL Cell CENPES - PETROBRAS Avenida Jequitibá, 950, Quadra 7, Ilha do Fundão, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil 2 Sirlei Sebastião Alves de Sousa Senior Consultant - GTL Cell FUJB - Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, UFRJ Avenida Jequitibá, 950, Quadra 7, Ilha do Fundão, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil 3 Fernando Barbosa de Oliveira Process Engineer - GTL Cell CENPES - PETROBRAS Avenida Jequitibá, 950, Quadra 7, Ilha do Fundão, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil 1. Introduction Due to 1973 oil crisis, the Brazilian government, then run by a military junta, initiated in 1975 the ProÁlcool program. The ProÁlcool or Programa Nacional do Álcool (National Alcohol Program) was nationwide program financed by the government to phase out all automobile fuels derived from fossil fuels (such as gasoline) in favor of ethanol. It began with the anhydrous alcohol to blend with the gasoline. This mixture has been used since then and is now done with 24% of alcohol and 76% gasoline [1]. The decision to produce ethanol from fermented sugarcane was based on the low cost of sugar at the time. Other sources of fermentable carbohydrates were tested such as the manioc [1]. Sugarcane is in itself an enormously efficient production unit: every ton has an energy potential that is equivalent to 1.2 barrels of petroleum. Brazil is the largest sugarcane world producer, having the lowest production costs, followed by India and Australia. On average, 55% of Brazilian sugarcane is turned into alcohol [2]. Sugarcane is grown in Brazil’s Central-South and North-Northeast regions, with two harvest periods. It is the force behind the 307 existing “energy powerhouses” in Brazil, 128 of which are in fueled by sugarcane grown on 2.35 million hectares of land. These are mills and distilleries that process biomass from sugarcane feed a complex chain: they produce sugar as foodstuff, electric energy from bagasse (sugar cane fiber) burnt in their boilers, hydrated alcohol as a vehicle fuel and anhydrous alcohol to improve gasoline energy and environmental performance [2]. 2. Bagasse utilization strategies When sugarcane is processed at a sugar/ethanol factory, the cane stalks are shredded and crushed to extract the cane juice while the fibrous outer residue, known as bagasse, is sent to the 1 boiler to provide steam and electricity for the factory. The fact that the sugarcane plant provides its own source of energy for sugar/ethanol production in the form of bagasse has long been a special feature of the industry. In the traditional approach, factories and distilleries cogenerate just enough steam and electricity to meet their on-site needs [5]. Boilers and steam generators are typically run inefficiently in order to dispose of as much bagasse produced from cane crushing as possible. Some older factories purchase oil or electricity, because their steam generating technologies and boilers are extremely inefficient. Any factory designed and constructed today should be at least efficient enough to cover its own energy needs. With the availability of advanced cogeneration technologies, these factories today can harness the on-site bagasse resource to go beyond meeting their own energy requirements and produce surplus electricity for sale to the national grid or directly to other electricity consumers [5]. More efficient steam turbines operating at higher pressures can significantly increase electricity production. A typical Condensing Extraction Steam Turbines (CEST) operate at 4.0 to 6.0 MPa and produce enough steam to supply a typical sugar/ethanol factory and export 30 to 100 kWh of electricity per ton of cane (kWh/tc) to other users or to the national grid. CEST systems represent the state-of-the-art for bagasse cogeneration in terms of mature technologies that are fully commercialized in the marketplace [5]. Gasification of biomass for use in a high-efficiency gas turbine is a more advanced approach to bagasse cogeneration. This approach is based on the marriage of two technologies: a biomass gasifier unit with a gas turbine. There are a number of possible configurations like the Biomass Integrated Gasifier-Combined Cycle (BIG-CC). These systems could produce over twice as much power per ton of cane as CEST systems. However, unlike CEST systems, BIG-CC systems are not at present commercially mature. Besides, they are expected to have significantly higher capital costs [5]. There are two main options to sell surplus electricity from a sugar/ethanol factory. One is to sell to local off-grid customers, such as local industries or rural electricity cooperatives, thereby providing electricity services without the costs (both actual and organizational) that accompany grid connections. The second option is to sell surplus electricity to established utilities or distributors as an independent power producer and transport the electricity over the national grid [5]. 3. Brazilian experience overview Brazil has a long time tradition in the use of renewable energy. A look at the primary energy supply shows that in 2002, 41% of it was renewable energy, being 14% hydropower and biomass 27%. Hydropower plants amount to 65 GW of the 82 GW of total installed capacity. This is a unique situation, which has the positive aspect of using renewable energy, but leaves the country exposed to the seasonal rain pattern. The shortage that occurred in 2001 made the Government decide to diversify the energy supply sources, favoring the inclusion of a reasonable share of thermal power plants and creating a market share for other renewable sources of energy such as wind power and biomass [6]. The sugar cane sector in Brazil produces and processes more than 300 million metric tons of sugar cane. More than 50% of the sucrose is used in the production of ethanol. The sugar cane bagasse provides all energy required to process the sugar cane and several mills are already generating surplus power and selling it to the utilities. This surplus power generation of the 2 sugar/ethanol mills could be highly increased by the use of more efficient energy conversion systems, such as biomass gasification integrated with gas turbines and recovery of part of the sugar cane trash currently burned or wasted today, so as to supplement the bagasse as fuel. Both BIG-CC and trash recovery are emerging technologies that need development and demonstration in order to reach the market [6]. Under normal conditions, Brazil annually produces and processes a quarter of the 1300 million tons grown in more than 100 countries worldwide. The Brazilian sugar cane sector gross annual income of US$ 10 billion represents around 2% of the Gross National Product [6]. Cane production and processing are highly energy intensive activities that require, under Brazilian conditions, for each ton of cane 190 MJ in agricultural area (in the form of fossil fuels, fertilizers and other chemicals) and 1970 MJ in industry (in the form of chemicals and bagasse), the latter providing nearly 100% of the industry’s energy requirement. A life cycle analysis for ethanol production has indicated, however, that for each unit of fossil energy input to the agro industrial system, follow approximately nine units of renewable energy output (ethanol and surplus bagasse) to be used outside the system [6]. This situation has a huge potential for improvement if we bear in mind that ethanol represents only one third of the energy available in cane; the other two thirds represented by fiber in the cane stalks (bagasse) and in cane leaves (trash) is almost totally used in the process in the following away [6]: • 93% of the bagasse is used as fuel in cane processing, in a very inefficient way. • 85% of the trash is burned prior to cane harvesting to reduce the cost of this operation; the other 15% is harvested unburned but the trash is left on the ground to decay. In both cases the net result is that the carbon in the fiber returns to the atmosphere in the form of CO 2. This fact indicates that with some effort and investment this potentially available fuel (cane fiber) can be saved and used to generate electric power for the grid. Three things are required to accomplish this [6]. • Improve process energy efficiency to generate more bagasse surplus. • Harvest unburned cane and recover a reasonable fraction of the total trash. • Use an efficient technology to generate power. 4. Biomass-to-liquid: a new era in Brazilian alcohol business? 4.1 The Fischer-Tropsch Process The synthesis of hydrocarbons from CO hydrogenation over transition metal catalysts was discovered in 1902 when Sabatier and Sanderens produced CH 4 from H 2 and CO mixtures passed over Ni, Fe and Co catalysts. In 1923, Fischer and Tropsch reported the use of alkalized Fe catalysts to produce liquid hydrocarbons rich in oxygenated compounds – termed the Synthol process. Succeeding these initial discoveries, considerable effort went into developing catalysts for this process. In 1936, Fischer and Pilcher developed the medium pressure (10-15 bar) Fischer-Tropsch synthesis – FTS – process. Following this development, alkalized Fe catalysts were implemented into the medium pressure FTS process. Collectively, the process of converting CO and H 2 mixtures to liquid hydrocarbons over a transition metal catalyst has become know as the Fischer-Tropsch synthesis [7]. 3 Two main characteristics of FTS are the unavoidable production of a wide range of hydrocarbon products and the liberation of a large amount of heat from the highly exothermic synthesis reactions. Consequently, reactor design and process development has focused heavily on heat removal and temperature control. The focus of catalyst development is on improved catalyst lifetimes, activity and selectivity. Single pass FTS always produces a wide range of olefins, paraffins and oxygenated products such as alcohols, aldehydes, acids and ketones with water as a byproduct.
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