The Environmental Impact of Hand Sanitizer Ethanol

Nathan Kreutzer Author

04/06/2021 Added

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My research's purpose was to to help fight the global COVID pandemic by helping ethanol producers produce USP grade ethanol as well as study the environmental impacts of producing USP grade ethanol.

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[00:00:00.530]Hello, my name is Nathan Kreutzer.
[00:00:02.150]My UCARE project is,
[00:00:02.983]The Environmental Impact of Hand Sanitizer Ethanol.
[00:00:04.685]I worked with Gabe Cohen and Katie Mowat on this project.
[00:00:07.938]My advisors were Dr. Bruce Dvorak and Dr. Ashraf Aly Hassan.
[00:00:12.130]I would like to thank
[00:00:12.963]the Nebraska Center for Energy Sciences Research,
[00:00:15.390]and the Nebraska Public Power District,
[00:00:17.385]for helping fund this research.
[00:00:19.780]The agenda for this presentation today is as follows,
[00:00:22.070]we'll begin with the project background.
[00:00:24.970]We will then move into the product objectives.
[00:00:28.090]We'll look at the methods used in this project,
[00:00:29.800]and we will finally discuss
[00:00:30.878]the data, results, and conclusions.
[00:00:35.490]When COVID-19 first began to effect our entire world,
[00:00:38.070]one of the first methods of prevention found
[00:00:40.032]was a disinfection of hands and surfaces.
[00:00:43.170]Alcohol based disinfectants became a standard
[00:00:45.210]for disinfecting frequently touched surfaces,
[00:00:46.760]especially when soap and water run unavailable.
[00:00:48.430]The most common alcohol used in hand sanitizer
[00:00:51.300]at the time was isopropyl alcohol.
[00:00:52.750]Around the same time COVID-19 reached the United States,
[00:00:54.730]a large refinery producing much of the world's
[00:00:56.670]isopropyl alcohol had to be shut down.
[00:00:59.060]Ethanol is a suitable replacement for isopropyl alcohol,
[00:01:01.139]however at the time, many ethanol producers
[00:01:03.840]were producing fuel grade ethanol,
[00:01:05.460]which has much looser restrictions
[00:01:06.960]than USP or topical grade ethanol.
[00:01:09.350]The FDA for this reason temporarily raised
[00:01:11.240]the impurity limits to help producers
[00:01:12.853]more easily reach these impurity limits.
[00:01:16.930]There are three main objectives on this project.
[00:01:18.920]The first objective,
[00:01:20.100]was to support the global fight against COVID-19
[00:01:22.850]by helping ethanol plants meet the USP grade specifications.
[00:01:26.300]The way we planned to do this was by identifying
[00:01:28.340]the location where various impurities were produced
[00:01:30.290]or recycled in an ethanol production process.
[00:01:33.750]This would in turn help engineers find new ways
[00:01:35.548]of ethanol purification, as well as operations optimization.
[00:01:40.680]The second was identifying streams for use and innovative
[00:01:43.497]waste treatment methods.
[00:01:45.340]For example, bio scrubbers requires specific
[00:01:47.170]nutrient solution depending strongly on the total nitrogen,
[00:01:49.180]total phosphorus, total suspended solids, pH
[00:01:51.840]and chemical oxygen demand.
[00:01:53.700]The third is the environmental impact of USP grade
[00:01:55.910]ethanol production.
[00:01:56.940]We will look at the expected increase in hazardous
[00:01:58.630]air pollutants, CO2 production and water consumption.
[00:02:02.900]We'll now move in to the methods used on my project.
[00:02:06.220]Initially, 17 samples were pulled from the dry mill
[00:02:08.220]ethanol plant prior to adjustments allowing the plant
[00:02:10.120]to produce USP grade ethanol.
[00:02:11.820]The plant followed the above diagram's black and blue
[00:02:14.040]process streams,
[00:02:14.980]which is a common ethanol plant process flow scheme.
[00:02:18.000]Another common ethanol plant process flow scheme
[00:02:20.419]follows the black and gray data process streams.
[00:02:23.722]The difference between the two schemes
[00:02:24.843]is the addition of a distillation column,
[00:02:27.230]thermal oxidizer and a dryer.
[00:02:29.675]For many of the process streams between the two schemes
[00:02:32.860]are the same, for this reason it was assumed
[00:02:34.955]that most ethanol plants
[00:02:36.200]have a similar stream characteristic.
[00:02:39.884]The impurities we looked at were acetaldehyde, acetal,
[00:02:42.000]propanol and methanol.
[00:02:43.040]Seven of the samples, Mash 1 and 2, Beer 3 and 4,
[00:02:46.020]Bottom 7, Thin Stillage 9, 10, 11, Corn Oil, Corn Syrup,
[00:02:49.210]were high suspended solids.
[00:02:50.470]For this reason, they were centrifuged.
[00:02:52.266]The supernatant and the solids were tested separately
[00:02:54.315]for impurities.
[00:02:55.901]For testing we used a vacuum sorbent extraction (VASE),
[00:03:00.095]in conjunction with a gas chromatography
[00:03:03.030]and mass spectrometry, GC/MS,
[00:03:05.034]two milliliters of liquid sample
[00:03:07.260]or one gram of the solid sample was placed
[00:03:08.890]in a 20 milliliter vile, with a sample pen.
[00:03:11.840]The samples were vacuumed
[00:03:14.070]at 30 millimeter of mercury
[00:03:16.850]and placed in a 5600 SPEC for three hours
[00:03:19.342]at 70 degrees Celsius and 200 RPM.
[00:03:22.850]The samples were placed in a cooling tray for 10 minutes
[00:03:25.110]before they were placed in the GC/MS for analysis.
[00:03:28.972]For the water chemistry analysis, we looked
[00:03:31.810]at four different properties, the total phosphorus,
[00:03:33.410]the total nitrogen, total oxygen demand
[00:03:35.730]and the total suspended solids.
[00:03:37.130]The first three,
[00:03:38.470]they were tested using TNT vials
[00:03:40.390]and were placed in a HATCH DR2800.
[00:03:44.200]The fourth property was analyzed using
[00:03:45.764]the total suspended solids,
[00:03:48.943]using the standard wastewater analysis technique.
[00:03:54.330]We'll now move on to data, results and conclusion.
[00:03:57.970]Figure A shows the concentration of impurities
[00:04:00.130]in terms of parts per million throughout the plant,
[00:04:01.990]as well as the flow rate of these impurities,
[00:04:04.350]in terms of grams per minute.
[00:04:05.840]Figure B shows the overall COD and impurity COD,
[00:04:08.517]and the composition of the impurities COD
[00:04:11.170]each impurity contributes.
[00:04:12.741]Interesting things to be found from these diagrams.
[00:04:16.890]First, acetal concentrations
[00:04:19.520]appear at the beginning in the solids,
[00:04:24.050]in the Beer 3 and Beer 4 but are of very low concentration.
[00:04:27.110]In the distillation column, a portion of the acetaldehyde
[00:04:29.610]is converted into acetal
[00:04:31.610]and is concentrated in the distillation column tops.
[00:04:34.130]The difference between the acetal and acetaldehyde
[00:04:36.020]in a distillation column tops and molecular sieve
[00:04:38.690]would combined to be higher than the intern
[00:04:41.685]limits at 50 PPM.
[00:04:44.490]Second, methanol accumulation within the distillation column
[00:04:47.540]and molecular sieve loop.
[00:04:48.970]This is due to the properties of methanol
[00:04:50.880]and the separation principles using this loop.
[00:04:53.620]Methanol is a volatile, small molecule.
[00:04:55.860]Distillation column separate based on relative volatility.
[00:04:58.440]The more volatile component,
[00:04:59.840]leaves through the top of the column.
[00:05:01.206]Molecular sieves, trap small molecules,
[00:05:03.780]such as water and methanol,
[00:05:05.110]recycling them back to the distillation column,
[00:05:06.733]and lets larger molecules, such as acetal leave.
[00:05:09.310]But, with the amount of methanol filtered out by the
[00:05:11.730]molecular sieve,
[00:05:12.563]the total would be below the normal limit of 200 PPM.
[00:05:16.660]Third, propanol is not a compound regulated by the FDA
[00:05:20.120]in USP grade ethanol.
[00:05:21.260]However, it is regulated in other higher purity ethanol's.
[00:05:23.811]The difference between the flow rate
[00:05:25.817]and the distillation column tops,
[00:05:27.960]and the molecular sieve, which show a significant amount
[00:05:29.761]of propanol entering the final ethanol product.
[00:05:37.110]The summary of the water quality impacts are seen
[00:05:39.650]on the table on the left and correspond to the streams
[00:05:41.860]in the figure at the right.
[00:05:43.180]The streams with the highest solid content,
[00:05:45.390]Mash 1, Mash 2,
[00:05:48.093]or Beer 3, Beer 4, Bottoms 7
[00:05:50.710]and Thin Stillage 9, 10, 11
[00:05:53.380]and Corn Syrup 12,
[00:05:55.600]have a high total nitrogen, total phosphorus
[00:05:58.410]and total suspended solids.
[00:06:00.180]The column tops five and molecular sieve reject 6
[00:06:03.170]have high total nitrogen and total phosphorus.
[00:06:05.748]This data may be helpful in determining potential
[00:06:09.240]treatment methods.
[00:06:14.190]The environmental impacts are as follows.
[00:06:15.770]The majority of the hazardous air pollutant, HAPs,
[00:06:18.120]are created during the fermentation process.
[00:06:20.250]Additional separation won't lead to increase HAPs.
[00:06:22.731]Additional separation techniques,
[00:06:24.513]as of now, don't require excess water usage.
[00:06:27.480]So, water demand is not expected to increase.
[00:06:31.250]A common additional separation technique used is secondary
[00:06:34.700]distillation.
[00:06:36.220]Extra steam is required in the reboiler
[00:06:38.147]for additional
[00:06:39.910]distillation columns.
[00:06:41.170]For this reason additional natural gas
[00:06:42.980]will need to be burned,
[00:06:44.110]and will increase the greenhouse gas released,
[00:06:48.610]by usually 5 to 10%, but possibly as high as 100%.
[00:06:53.670]Doing some simple calculations,
[00:06:54.930]with the exception of the CO2 produced during fermentation
[00:06:57.610]which many ethanol plants recapture, purify and sell,
[00:07:00.339]a 30 milliliter travel sized bottle of ethanol based
[00:07:04.460]hand sanitizer requires reduction of around
[00:07:06.175]0.02 pounds of CO2.
[00:07:13.960]Here are my sources used for this project.
[00:07:18.120]Thank you, for listening to my presentation.

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