Sustainable Use of Solar Energy to Produce Methanol from Sugar Industry Waste

The minimising of environmental pollution is a challenge for Ecuadorian sugar industries. CO2 from combustion of sugarcane waste (bagasse), needs to be processed immediately after emission. Including ecofriendly energy to replace the use hydrocarbon fuels is other interesting way to reduce the environmental carbonization. Unify these two proposals in the production of a product, is the objective of this innovative work, to the best of our knowledge, it has not been done in Ecuador. CO2 from burnt sugarcane waste, was captured and reacted with hydrolysed hydrogen to obtain methanol. And, a solar photovoltaic (PV) system was designed to provide clean energy, at the stage of methanol distillation, critical in terms of pollution. Optimum process conditions were found to carry out the distillation in a column 57 plates, flux ratio 1.2 and fed temperature 80 °C. Environmental conditions of geographic region, daily peak sun, technical data about power, voltage, current and material of solar panels and inverter were used in the models proposed by Kayode and Enock for solar system design. Methanol product was purified from 47.5 to 99.92% mol, confirming the effectiveness of the absorption by Monoehtanolamine and distillation as separation methods. Resulted of the energy balance, 650KW is the wattage for powering the overall PV system. 1300 monocrystalline silica solar panels of 500W, were connected to 11 grid string inverters, each one 80 kW, following the optimal design calculated. Our results clearly indicate a novel viability to reduce CO2 and save hydrocarbon fuel consumption, which is not unlimited resource and main air pollutant.