Análisis termodinámico del proceso real de extracción de aceite de palma africana.

In this work, the irreversibilities of african palm oil extraction process, that takes place in a real extraction plant on San Alberto (Cesar), was estimated. This was done in order to identify the location and magnitude of the main sinks of exergy (related to the highest losses of useful energy) in the process by using the first and second law of thermodynamics; Besides, with the found results it is possible the implementation of future improvements at those stages in order to make more efficient the extraction process. The methodology undertaken was developed in 3 steps: First of all, 30.000 kg/h of fresh fruit bunches enter the process and they are submitted under pressure and temperature effects in the stages of sterilization, stripping or threshing, digestion, pressing, clarification and drying to obtain a total of 6.756 kg/h of extracted oil, it was simulated using Aspen Plus 2006.5™. After that, energy, entropy and exergy balances were done to estimate the irreversibilities through the process, equal to 993,1 GJ/h. Additionally, it was identified that pressing and digestion steps have the highest exergy losses with values of 388,7 and 225,7 GJ/h respectively. Subsequently, exergy efficiency was calculated for each stage in the process, in which drying with 99% and clarification with 97%, were the most outstanding results. Finally, the values obtained by the Gouy-Stodola theorem were compared with the results of the exergy balance, finding a high degree of accuracy between them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]