Simulação de processo biotecnológico na obtenção de ácido propiônico a partir da glicerina

Abstract

The use of carboxylic acids worldwide tends to increase over the years, given the growing demand for these raw materials in various industrial areas. The big challenge is to produce the acid from renewable sources in a way that this process is competitive with production from petroleum derivatives, which is the process that currently prevails, since non-renewable sources have become increasingly scarce. The production of the acid by renewable routes occurs through propane fermentation with limitation of low yield and low purity of the product, requiring more investment in purification steps. In order to change this scenario, the production in anaerobic and aerobic mediums and extraction after fermentation can be evaluated, performing a parametric analysis, aiming to obtain higher yield and purity, making this process viable. Therefore, the objective of this work is to simulate and optimize the fermentative process for the production and extraction of propanoic acid in aerobic and anaerobic environments by identifying the best operating conditions of the process through experimental planning, aiming to maximize the yield of the production process and purity of propanoic acid. To this end, papers were selected from the literature to be simulated in the condition of aero and anaerobiosis, in addition to extractive reactions using extractant and solvents, the simulation of the production and extraction process was performed using the software Aspen Hysys and Plus version 8.8, after which the parameters of each process were optimized from parametric analysis using the software. The models obtained for the acid production presented values in agreement with the experimental data in the literature. As for the factors that affect the extraction efficiency these were the 3 selected variables, showing their importance, as for the optimal values for temperature, substrate and biomass concentration, these were 29.27 °C, 1.07 g.L-1 and 57.97 g.L-1 respectively for the process with oxygen, while in anaerobiosis they were 32.93 °C 0.75 g.L-1 and 55.30 g.L-1. As for the extraction step, the models were able to predict the experimental data very accurately with optimal values for the solvent ratio and number of stages being 2.01 g.L-1 and 10 stages for the aerobic process and 2.02 g.L-1 and 10 stages for the anaerobic process. Thus, the results suggest that the simulations of production and extraction performed better than expected, due to the adaptation of the models to different process variations and model accuracy to experimental values found in the literature.