Análise técnico-econômica-ambiental da produção integrada de etanol e biodiesel no contexto brasileiro

Abstract

The Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions must be reduced, it is a global emergency. Biofuels, such as ethanol and biodiesel, are indispensables parts of the brazilian renewable energy matrix, and has an essential place when thinking about the replacement of fossil fuels and the transition to a low carbon energy matrix. Brazil has a tactical position in this scene, due to its production volume of sugar cane and vegetable oils. The ethanol’s agro-industrial park is already well funded in the country. Meanwhile, biodiesel is still expanding at the national scenario. Biodiesel produced by enzymatic catalysis represents less environment impact, however its high production cost has been making its industrial implementation impractical. Hereupon, this thesis proposes to rate the biodiesel’s production’s enzymatic route, using as reference to compare the alkaline catalysis route. Different routes of enzymatic biodiesel’s production, distinguished techniques of segregation of this biofuel, its integrated production in a soy biorefinery and the process’ expansion to a integrated soy and sugar cane biorefinery are the discussed points. It was analyzed the separation of the biodiesel through washing it with hot water after caustic polish and by distillation. The Net Present Value (NPV) and Internal Rate of Return (IRR) were chosen as economic metrics, and the Global-Warming Potential (GWP), as environmental metric. The results imply that the enzymatic biodiesel division shows better economic development while using biodiesel washing, but the distillation represented less environmental impact. The frying oil biodiesel had bigger IRR (38 %), and the smallest GWP (4,05 CO2eq/kg). The cultivated soybean oil transesterification the alkaline catalyze has NPV 4,5 times higher and GWP 4,4 % superior than the transesterification by Eversa® Transform 2.0 in free form and with four reuses of enzyme. On the low environmental impact production research, it was pretended the enzymatic biodiesel production integration, catalyzed by lipase free Eversa and with four reuses of enzyme, integrated to the oil extraction and the ethanol production in a soy and sugar cane combined biorefinery. To reduce the time of simulation processing of this case, the process was performed by Kriging universal metamodels, estimating the NPV and the GWP of biorefinery. The soy biorefinery and sugar cane showed economic viability with NPV of US$ 50 millions and some reduction on the CO2eq emissions, as much as to ethanol as to biodiesel. The application strategy was efficient, enabling the analyzes’ realization on tractable dimension systems.