Among bio-oil compounds, acetic acid and phenolics are the most prevalent, and water is present as a sub-product of the process. This project aims to evaluate the use of SAFT like equations to predict the liquid-liquid phase equilibria behavior between binary and ternary mixtures of those compounds.
Bio-oil is fuel produced from biomass fast pyrolysis. It can be composed from more than 400 compounds. Among its compounds, acetic acid and phenolics are the most prevalent, and water is present as a sub-product of the process.
In order to improve the quality of the fuel, it is necessary to remove these corrosive compounds, which is done by a separation process. The use of a model capable of predicting the liquid-liquid phase equilibria behavior is necessary in designing such processes.
As water, acetic acid and phenolics can form hydrogen bounds, a model that can take into consideration the associative nature of these mixtures is recommended, such as the SAFT like equations. Good results have been obtained using SAFT like equations when modeling pure component properties and phase equilibria of mixture with associative nature, and although there are a number of settings that can predict well the behavior of such compounds, tests should be made to evaluate the efficiency of them in the reproduction of phase equilibria behavior.
The sPC-SAFT is one of the most widely used SAFT models, and has been vastly used in the chemical industry to simulate phase equilibria behavior, especially with mixtures that contain associative compounds. This project aims to evaluate the use of sPC-SAFT to predict the liquid-liquid phase equilibria behavior between binary and ternary mixtures of those compounds.
Co- supervisor:
Márcio Luís Lyra Paredes (UERJ)
André Luís Alberton (UERJ)