Thermodynamic model for advanced biofuels

MARIANA GONZÁLEZ PRIETO; SELVA PEREDA; FRANCISCO A. SÁNCHEZ

Villa Carlos Paz, Córdoba

Conferencia; XI Iberoamerican Conference on Phase Equilibria and Fluid Properties for Process Design: EQUIFASE2018; 2018

IPQA-UNC-CONICET

Sustainability issues have driven the industry to renewable sources for energy and chemical production. As biomass is the only source of renewable carbon, its potential to replace fossil-oil derived chemicals, solvents, or even fuels, is permanently assessed. In particular, advanced biofuels, when used as components in fuels, offer advantages over fossil-based hydrocarbons and conventional biofuels to realize highly efficient and clean propulsion systems that require less complex engine control and exhaust gas aftertreatment. The comprehensive review by Leitner et al.[1] assesses the whole process chain of a biofuel production and consumption, considering aspects related, not only to propulsion and emissions, but also to their synthesis route. The authors proposed an interesting fuel design process, considering propulsion and production aspects simultaneously to find out the best chemical structure candidates. This process system engineering approach requires a robust thermodynamic model in order to predict phase behavior and other properties for both, new technology development and new products design. In this work, we show that GCA-EoS is a good tool for that purpose because it is able to predict with one set of parameters multiphase behavior in a wide range of conditions. GCA-EoS has been extensively applied to first generation biofuels. The model has been described elsewhere[2]. In this work we present the extension of the model to new bio-based compounds that are being proposed as advanced biofuels due to their favorable properties. In particular, we focus in ether derived biofuels, both aliphatic and aromatic.