Simulação do processo de extração supercrítica do óleo de tucumã-do-Pará (Astrocaryum vulgare) usando aspenHYSYS

Abstract

The adaptation of industrialization in the form of a sustainable economy, technological advances and computational benefits have motivated the use of process simulators to evaluate the potential of oleaginous species native to the Amazon region through fast and automated simulations. Therefore, the objective of this work was to apply the AspenHYSYS simulator to describe the tucumã-do-Pará oil extraction process using supercritical carbon dioxide as solvent. The feasibility of simulations of the tucumã oil extraction process using the mathematical models of Menezes et al. (2023) and Tan and Liou (1989) were comparatively evaluated with experimental data previously selected from the literature. Simulations of the supercritical extraction of tucumã-do Pará oil found that the model by Menezes et al. (2023) was adequate to describe the experimental kinetic data for all evaluated systems, which presented an RSD with a lower value of 0.57. The energy and material cost were calculated, and the value obtained (2.82 R$/g of oil) together with the high concentration of bioactives in the product demonstrate that the studied process presents a positive cost-benefit ratio. An increase in scale was carried out for beds 1, 5, 10 and 50L. For beds of up to 10L, an adequate projection of the process was obtained, considering that the deviations obtained were less than 1, however, for 50L, the adjustment presented a deviation of 58, which may infer that the model used has a scalability limit. Simulations of the supercritical extraction of tucumã-do-Pará oil, using AspenHYSYS, led to values consistent with the experimental data, thus confirming that the studied plant proved to be an effective tool for the study of the process.