Sorgo sacarino como substrato para a produção de etanol e modelagem da cinética de fermentação
Resumo
Sorghum is a grass with significant cultivation in several countries and of great agricultural
and livestock importance, mainly due to the inclusion of its grain in animal nutrition, being
the fifth most produced cereal in the world. A broth rich in fermentable sugars can be
obtained from the culms of the saccharin variety of sorghum, which has been the subject of
several studies aiming at it as an alternative source to produce fuel alcohol and to reduce the
idle period of sugarcane mills in the off-season. Unlike sugarcane, a traditional raw material
in Brazil, the cultivation of sorghum is not limited to the tropical climate, it adapts to
different types of soil and is better resistant to drought. In the USA, where the production of
ethanol from cereals is already well structured, sorghum grains are widely used for this
purpose, where they can be processed with corn grains. In the last decade, the first corn
ethanol plants appeared in Brazil, opening possibilities for sorghum grain and, consequently,
contributing to the decentralization of sugar and alcohol industry. This final paper sought to
expose the panorama and perspectives of the industrial production of ethanol from sorghum
in Brazil and, with data from fermentative tests in the literature, the mathematical modeling
of the concentration profiles of cells, substrate and product was carried out throughout the
process, having sweet sorghum grains and juice as sources of sugars. With the support of the
Python programming language, mass balances were solved, with cell growth kinetics based
on the Monod model. The adjusted parameters generated simulated profiles with good
approximation to the experimental data. It was also possible to estimate a total ethanol yield
of 6,192 L/ha/harvest, which makes the use of this raw material interesting, considering its
other characteristics.
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