Analysis of Fuel Ethanol Plant Liquor with the Composition Explicit Distillation Curve Method

Although the use of ethanol and ethanol blends as motor fuels dates back to the earliest vehicles, ethanol has recently received extraordinary attention as a renewable liquid fuel. In the United States, the application of this fluid is mainly as an additive used to lower emissions (carbon monoxide and ozone), enhance antiknock index, and to extend gasoline stock. Elsewhere, such as in Brazil, mandated use raises ethanol to the level of a primary motor fuel. A major barrier to increased application of ethanol is the cost relative to gasoline, something that can be addressed to some extent by processing improvements, especially the distillation steps. Such improvements are not possible without the infrastructure of sound thermophysical property measurements, especially the distillation curves of the major plant streams. In this paper, we present the results of measurements made with the advanced distillation curve technique applied to five different process streams of a Brazilian ethanol plant. The advanced...