Avaliação da produção de etanol empregando milho como matéria-prima

Abstract

The production of ethanol in Brazil from corn grain has been consolidated as a viable, competitive and profitable reality for the ethanol industry in the last decade. This is because corn solves the problems resulting from: the idle period between harvests of sugarcane; the validity of the use of sugarcane as raw material; the expensive logistics of storing corn grains in agriculture; and it adds value to corn grain, which in the past had instability in the prices of their bags. The profitability generated by the use of corn as raw material in the ethanol industry is due to the fact that its production not only obtains ethanol as the main product, but also generates other by-products such as oil, corn syrup and DDGs (Dried Distillers Grains), which is being widely used in the feeding of animals in partial replacement of corn. Compared to ethanol production using sugarcane as raw material, the processing of corn grain requires additional steps to convert the starchy material present in corn into sugar. Before being processed in the industry, corn needs to be transported, cleaned, dried and stored. Subsequently the corn is ground by dry or wet milling, according to the final purpose of the products and aggregated values of each production plant. These initial steps added to the cooking, liquefaction and saccharification steps are performed so that the starch is broken into fermentable sugars and can be converted into ethanol in fermentation in the same way as sugarcane production, with a total duration between 40 and 70 hours. In the processing of corn ethanol, the bottom product of distillation towers can generate corn syrup, DDG, or DDGS (dry distillery grains with solubles). In Brazil, the flexibilization of sugarcane and corn industries is more common in the state of Mato Grosso, the largest producer of corn in the country. The use of corn as raw material in the ethanol industry is a viable alternative due to market projections for ethanol consumption in 2026. Therefore, this work studies the stages of the ethanol production process using corn as raw material.