Integrated Ethanol and Pretreatment Facility for Renewable Diesel Feedstock
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Solution Overview
Problem
The production of renewable diesel is hindered by the high cost and logistical challenges of transporting vegetable oils from ethanol facilities to pretreatment facilities, leading to increased infrastructure and transportation costs.
Innovation Solution
An integrated facility co-locates ethanol and pretreatment plants, allowing for the on-site refinement of vegetable oils using a liquid-liquid extraction process that removes impurities, and recycles wastewater back into the ethanol plant, thereby reducing waste management and transportation costs.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of manufacture
If vegetable oils are transported from ethanol facilities to pretreatment facilities, then renewable diesel production is enabled, but transportation costs and infrastructure requirements increase significantly
Solution Approach 1:
The patent combines the ethanol facility and pretreatment facility into a single integrated complex, allowing vegetable oils to be processed on-site without transportation. The integration enables direct transfer of oils from the ethanol distillation process to the pretreatment units within the same facility, eliminating the need for external transportation infrastructure and reducing associated costs.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces an on-site pretreatment facility as an intermediary between the ethanol production and renewable diesel synthesis processes. This intermediary unit processes the vegetable oils immediately after extraction from stillage, converting them into a form suitable for renewable diesel production without requiring external transportation or storage infrastructure.
2Ease of manufacture
If vegetable oils are transported to pretreatment facilities, then feedstock processing is achieved, but infrastructure costs and logistical challenges increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent merges the pretreatment infrastructure with the existing ethanol facility infrastructure, sharing common utilities, processing equipment, and operational facilities. This integration reduces the overall infrastructure complexity by eliminating duplicate systems and utilizing existing assets for dual purposes.
Solution Approach 2:
The integrated facility design allows existing infrastructure to serve multiple functions - the ethanol distillation system produces both ethanol and vegetable oil byproducts, while the pretreatment facility processes both the ethanol plant's oil output and potentially external oil feedstocks, maximizing infrastructure utilization and reducing overall system complexity.
3Manufacturing precision
If liquid-liquid extraction is used to remove impurities from vegetable oils, then feedstock quality is improved, but additional processing steps are required
Solution Approach 1:
The patent employs liquid-liquid extraction to selectively remove impurities from the vegetable oil feedstock. This extraction process separates contaminants from the oil phase using an appropriate solvent, producing high-quality purified oil suitable for renewable diesel synthesis while concentrating impurities in the extract phase for disposal or further processing.
Solution Approach 2:
The extraction process is designed to operate continuously, with the purified oil stream flowing directly to subsequent processing stages without interruption. This continuous operation maintains production efficiency while ensuring consistent feedstock quality, and the integrated design allows the extraction units to be seamlessly incorporated into the overall process flow.
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
This integrated approach significantly reduces the cost of pretreatment and waste management, enhances the efficiency of both ethanol and pretreatment plants, and produces high-quality renewable diesel feedstocks with reduced impurities.
Implementation Method 1
the vegetable oil product and an aqueous based extractant solution are used in a liquid-liquid extraction process in the pretreatment plant, where the vegetable oil product and aqueous extractant solution are contacted and then separated to yield the purified vegetable oil
Data Source
AI summary
An integrated facility for the co-production of ethanol and the pretreatment of impure vegetable oils, waxes and (animal) fats is provided. A by-product from the ethanol plant, such as distillers corn oil or distillers sorghum oil, can be directly refined on site to remove contaminants such as metals, phospholipids and inorganic anions, to enable use as ready feedstocks for a renewable diesel hydrotreatment plant. The utility of the ethanol plant infrastructure can be directly harnessed to pretreat and purify a variety of impure feedstock materials. The pretreatment reduces catalytic poisoning in the reduction process at refining facilities during the synthesis of renewable diesel. By-products of the pretreatment process are recycled to various parts of the ethanol plant for incorporation into the animal feed(s) produced by the ethanol plant or incorporated into the existing wastewater treatment and disposal system within the ethanol plant.