Bioethanol production from Iraqi date palm resources

الملخص EN

The present work focuses on the most interested bioethanol production from Iraqi date palm resources (so called Zahde) as a sugar yield substrate using improved technology of hydrothermal extraction, fermentation and distillation.

The extracted sugar liquid juices were converted into bioethanol by aerobic and anaerobic fermentation.

Fermentation for bioethanol production consists of two operations, namely, biomass fermentation and bioethanol fermentation.

The distillation consists of two stage columns rectification.

The feasibility of this process has been improved by the construction of a well designed stainless steel pilot plant with 3 metric tons of bioethanol production per day of 96 vol.

% purity.

However, so many experiments have been carried out to optimize the productivity and the purity of bioethanol according to the design parameters.

The pilot plant yield is 90 % based on the processes raw material with 96 vol.

% bioethanol productivity of (300-330) liter per ton of date palm.

The purity of bioethanol was tested using GC technology that indicated 96 vol.

% purity of ethanol and 1.2 vol.

% methanol at 25°C with not more than 450 ppm of contaminants.

The optimum operating condition, equipment specification and the process flow diagram were extremely described in this paper.