Effects of integrating a bioethanol production process to a kraft pulp mill

The integration of an ethanol production process based on prehydrolysis of softwood chips to a kraft pulp mill is discussed. A simulation model of this biorefinery has been created with WinGEMS simulation software to calculate the mass and energy balances of the biorefinery and to examine the effects of the integration on the operation of the pulp mill. Integrating the prehydrolysis process to the modeled pulp mill producing 1000 Adt/day of pine pulp would increase the wood consumption by 16%. With the increased wood consumption, 40 t/day of ethanol could be produced, and the excess power production could be increased by 460 MWh/day. The integration of the ethanol production process to a pulp mill would have considerable effects on the operation of the pulp mill. The coupling of hydrolyzate evaporation with black liquor evaporation would require major modifications in the evaporation plant. Due to the burning of organic residue from the ethanol process and to the increase in the heating value of black liquor, the load on the recovery boiler would increase by 31%.