Performance analysis of solar ethanol distillation

N. Vorayos, T. Kiatsiriroat and N. Vorayos

Renewable Energy, 2006, vol. 31, issue 15, 2543-2554

Abstract: Continuous solar ethanol distillation systems having flat-plate and evacuated heat pipe solar collectors are constructed to study their performances and economic viability. The mathematical model of each main component is carried out and the system simulation is developed. The simulated outputs express a reasonable agreement with the experimental results within 14% accuracy. From the simulation, start up with 10% alcohol concentration, the production cost of 80% alcohol concentration from the distillation system of which the yield at 12,500l/year is evaluated. With the economic analysis, the results show that the use of solar distillation systems appear to be economical compared to the conventional distillation system using fuel oil as heat source. The minimum production cost of the system is 0.39 US$/l.

Keywords: Solar energy; Ethanol distillation; System simulation; Production cost (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960148106000383
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:renene:v:31:y:2006:i:15:p:2543-2554

DOI: 10.1016/j.renene.2006.01.016

Access Statistics for this article

Renewable Energy is currently edited by Soteris A. Kalogirou and Paul Christodoulides

More articles in Renewable Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().