Preliminary plant design and economics for production of furfural from maize cobs
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Date
1981
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Publisher
University of Dar es Salaam
Abstract
The most important uses of furfural include the following; it is a chemical intermediate selective solvent in the refining of oils, resin former, decolourising agent for wood resin, reactive solvent in the manufacture of retinoid bonded, grinding wheels and extract ant for butadiene. At the moment Tanzania has no industries making direct use of furfural. Because of future potential industries, availability of agricultural wasters as raw materials and considerable earning of foreign currency the authors feels that installation of a furfural plant in Tanzania will be beneficial. A 5000 metric tons per year of furfural production has been proposed. The raw material is maize cobs to be acquired from Arusha Region (the proposed location for the plant). Furfural will be produced by an autocatalytic hydrolysis of maize cobs using superheated steam at high pressure. The block diagram and the flow sheet show the detailed nature of the process. The major equipment used include the hydrolysis reactor the area tropic column, the dehydration column the continuous decanter and the crusher for the maize cobs. There is also a secondary steam generators to make use of heat from the hot vapours coming from the reactor. The other equipments are storage tanks and vessels, heat exchange and condensers. The total capital investment for the plant is estimated to be 406 millions of Tanzania shillings. It has been established that the payout period is 4 years and the discounted cash flow is 18%. The break even and shut down points occur at 47.5% and 28% plant capacity respectively. Therefore the study shows that the project is viable at the proposed capacity and location.
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Keywords
Production engineering- furfural, Maize cobs processing, Quality control, Exports, Tanzania
Citation
Mulamula, T. L (1981) Preliminary plant design and economics for production of furfural from maize cobs, Masters dissertation, University of Dar es Salaam. Available at (http://41.86.178.3/internetserver3.1.2/detail.aspx?parentpriref=)