Economic, Environmental and Dynamic Optimization Applied to Hybrid Processes for the Purification of Biobutanol

Abstract Biobutanol is more energy dense and less hygroscopic than bioethanol, resulting in higher possible blending ratios with gasoline. Recently, new developments are focused on diminish the impact in two zones, the strains improvements and the downstream processes. Recent studies conclude that the inclusion of an extractive column can diminish the economic impact. In this study several hybrid designs are compared from a multi-objective optimization perspective where three objective function are evaluated simultaneously, the total annual cost as economic target, theeco-indicator 99 as environmental target and the condition number as controllability index using a stochastic hybrid algorithm, Differential Evolution with Tabu List. Our results indicate that the intensified configuration show the best dynamic behavior in addition with the smallest TAC values with a slightly penalty in the eco indicator values.