Conceptual design of cost-effective and environmentally-friendly configurations for fuel ethanol production from sugarcane by knowledge-based process synthesis

► Conceptual design of fuel ethanol production from sugarcane was performed. ► Knowledge-based strategy for process synthesis was employed. ► Best option considering techno-economic and environmental criteria was identified. ► Evaluation of alternative configurations was done based on process simulation. In this work, the hierarchical decomposition methodology was used to conceptually design the production of fuel ethanol from sugarcane. The decomposition of the process into six levels of analysis was carried out. Several options of technological configurations were assessed in each level considering economic and environmental criteria. The most promising alternatives were chosen rejecting the ones with a least favorable performance. Aspen Plus was employed for simulation of each one of the technological configurations studied. Aspen Icarus was used for economic evaluation of each configuration, and WAR algorithm was utilized for calculation of the environmental criterion. The results obtained showed that the most suitable synthesized flowsheet involves the continuous cultivation of Zymomonas mobilis with cane juice as substrate and including cell recycling and the ethanol dehydration by molecular sieves. The proposed strategy demonstrated to be a powerful tool for conceptual design of biotechnological processes considering both techno-economic and environmental indicators.