Chemical Engineering & Technology, Vol.38, No.9, 1654-1658, 2015
Software for Simulation of Second-Generation Ethanol Production by a Simultaneous Saccharification and Fermentation Process
Environmental impacts associated with the consumption of fossil fuels and the need to generate power through renewable resources demands the usage of alternative materials. The objective is the production of clean energy from materials like lignocellulosic biomass to produce second-generation (2G) ethanol. A software in the Matlab program is elaborated to simulate the simultaneous saccharification and fermentation (SSF) process of lignocellulosic biomass for the 2G ethanol production in batch reactors. Studying the effects of the process variables, it was found that the higher interference is caused by cellulose concentration. Higher concentrations of the product in batch processes are obtained with the maximum cellulose concentrations, cells, and enzyme.