Viability and application of ethanol production coupled with solar cooling

This work presents a combined optimization system to use solar energy as support for the ethanol industry. Solar radiation is used to produce energy in order to assist the cooling systems in the fermentation process. The experiments have been performed following a hardware in the loop technique by mixing the solar cooling plant in the Centro de Investigaciَn de Energيa Solar (CIESOL) located at the University of Almerيa (Spain), and a simulator of ethanol fermentation processes in Brazilian factories. The results are analyzed in detail to show the main advantages (important increment in ethanol production and use of clean energies) compared to the mode of operation of the current factories in Brazil.