Simulation and techno-economic optimization of the supercritical CO2 extraction of Eucalyptus globulus bark at industrial scale

• Autor(a) principal: Rodrigues, Vítor H.
• Data de Publicação: 2019
• Outros Autores: de Melo, Marcelo M.R., Portugal, Inês, Silva, Carlos M.
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10773/37484
• topic: BIC modeling; Biorefinery; Eucalyptus globulus bark; RSM-COM; Supercritical CO2 extraction

This work addresses economic and process aspects of the supercritical fluid extraction (SFE) of Eucalyptus globulus bark at industrial scale. Broken plus intact cells (BIC) model was applied to existing data and new SFE curves were simulated. Then, statistical optimization was performed with Response Surface Methodology (RSM) involving of 5 factors (pressure, temperature, cosolvent content, solvent flow rate and extraction time), and four responses: Total Yield (ηTotal), Productivity, Cost of Manufacturing (COM) and Process Energy. The design and simulation of the industrial process (Aspen Plus® software) was performed including the employment of cosolvent in the system. The best COM scored 28.1 € kgextract-1, where ηTotal was 0.84-0.96 wt.%, Productivity reached 311–362 tonextractyear-1, and Process Energy scored 1.46– 2.10 GJ kgextract-1. These results underline that SFE provides an extended margin for trade-offs, and arguments towards the integration of SFE technology to biorefine the bark of E. globulus in pulp mills.