Performance evaluation of bioethanol production through continuous fermentation with a settling unit

This paper analyses a model for the production of bioethanol that has been calibrated against laboratory data by previous researchers. The authors investigate the improvement in productivity that can be obtained when a centrifuge is used to recycle cells that would otherwise leave the reactor system in the efficient stream. The authors compare the performance of a double reactor cascade, possible employing a settling unit, against that of a single reactor. For the former case, this paper considers the reactor configuration in which the settling unit recycles from the effluent stream of a reactor back in the influent of the same reactor.