Proposal for a Biorefinery in a Cuban Sugar Industry Taking Advantage the Biomass

Cuban sugar industry opens possibilities for a biorefinery development due to its flows characteristics and its facilities for obtaining different products, co-products and energy. This work proposes the development of a biorefinery considering the production of sugar, energy, ethanol, xylose, torula cream and biogas as main products, using sugar cane and leftover bagasse as biomass. When obtaining second-generation ethanol, bagasse hydrolyzate, filter juice extracted from sugar production and molasses are used as sugar sources, which allows a reduction of 24% in molasses consumption in fermentation stage. The profit of proposed scheme was optimized considering 120 and 150 harvest days, and the results indicates that superfine alcohol production can increase to 800 and 900 hL/d respectively, keeping constant the rectified ethyl alcohol production. An economic analysis shows that profitability is only achieved when only ethanol is produced, although the integrated scheme is profitable for both analyzed harvest periods.