Abstract
Recent trends of biomass energy were briefly reviewed, and the potential of biomass energy was discussed from view points of renewability, C02 reduction effect and applicable mass of resources. Biomass ethanol was considered to be the most attractive energy because of its well preservation and wide applicability to motor vehicles, and the technical problems in the production of fuel ethanol were also discussed. For the practical use of fuel ethanol, the new production system was proposed and the energy requirements in the concentration of a fermented ethanol to a dehydrated ethanol were studied. The results showed that the heat integrated distillation column (HIDiC) to be developed had a large potential in energy saving. It was confirmed that the energy requirement of the HIDiC was less than 55% of a conventional distillation column, and that the dehydration by membrane process also needed less than 30% of the energy required in the conventional azeotrope distillation process.
