2018 - Sustainable Industrial Processing Summit & Exhibition
4-7 November 2018, Rio Othon Palace, Rio De Janeiro, Brazil
Seven Nobel Laureates have already confirmed their attendance: Prof. Dan Shechtman, Prof. Sir Fraser Stoddart, Prof. Andre Geim, Prof. Thomas Steitz, Prof. Ada Yonath, Prof. Kurt Wüthrich and Prof. Ferid Murad. More than 400 Abstracts Submitted from about 60 Countries.
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    Process Intensification in Biorefineries – the Way to High Added Value Products
    Ludo Diels1;
    1VITO/UA, Mol, Belgium;
    PAPER: 314/AdvancedMaterials/Keynote (Oral)
    SCHEDULED: 15:15/Wed./Guaratiba (60/2nd)



    ABSTRACT:
    The global trend towards sustainability and resource efficiency urges us to transform our concept of chemical plants and strive for compact, safe, energy-efficient, and environment-friendly sustainable processes. These developments share a common focus on process intensification. At the level of core conversion processes in a biorefinery, one way to achieve process intensification entails combining reaction and separation in such a way that the overall result is more sustainable, delivers better product quality, reduces the equipment size, lowers the solvent use both for (i) bioprocesses and (ii) chemical processes. Several bio-based processes are plagued by limited product titers and volumetric productivities due to product inhibition. Other processes suffer from side reactions decreasing the yield of the process. Many enzymatic reactions are characterized by suboptimal reaction equilibria. For such processes, it can be advantageous to invest in a recovery technology that allows the selective separation of the product during fermentation or biocatalysis. In-situ product recovery (ISPR) is a key technology platform to intensify bioprocesses. Specific cases will be presented and the benefits for the selected processes explained. Clever integration of separation technology can also be beneficial for chemical processes requiring high dilution to prevent precipitation or intramolecular reactions or processes that suffer from substrate inhibition. The concept of volume intensified dilution not only allows to get similar or better yields and purities, but also a considerable reduction of solvent use. In upstream and downstream processing, proper pretreatment of feedstocks to remove inhibitory components and selective separations in downstream processing are essential as well. Bioprocesses have the disadvantage to operate under quite dilute conditions. This means that concentrating the product, re-using the water and desalinating the water are becoming key challenges for the success of future bio-based processes. These challenges will be explained via different examples from practice.