BIOETHANOL PRODUCTION FROM OIL PALM TRUNK WITH SCHEDULING OPTIMIZATION

This research focuses on the optimization of bioethanol production from palm waste by minimizing energy consumption and scheduling the production line. Commercial software named ASPEN Plus Suite is used, including Aspen Plus, for studying the bioethanol production process from oil palm trunk, Aspen Batch Process Developer for scheduling the minimum time to get ethanol, and Aspen Energy Analyzer for minimizing energy consumption by pinch analysis. The minimum process operation time can achieve by batch scheduling. The ethanol production process from oil palm trunk has an ethanol capacity of 10,000 liters per day. This raw material is approximately 47,200 kg per day. The production schedule can introduce the system to operate simultaneously between batch and continuous processes by using an overlap operation of subsequent processing batch. It can reduce the idle time of equipment significantly. Three bioreactors of simultaneous saccharification and fermentation (SSF) proposes the target of bioethanol every 24.5 hours and increasing the performance of equipment utility. The result shows that it can increase the performance of equipment utilization to 73.07%. The result of bioethanol from oil palm trunk can conclude that the process with the heat exchanger network has a total cost of 691,481 $/year, and the process with a base case has total cost 789,374 $/year. It can conclude that the process with the heat exchanger network has a total cost less than the process with the base case. Therefore, it can reduce costs per year, around 12.40%.