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Introduction
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August 2010 - July 2015
Publications
Publications (28)
The location of process equipment is an important issue for the industry. Poor distribution directly affects the safety and economy of the process. In this work, a multi-objective optimization is proposed to optimize the distribution of the layout, minimizing the annual cost and the risk of a domino effect. The optimization model minimizes the domi...
Biodiesel can be produced by using supercritical alcohols as reactants. Among the main advantages of such approach is that the mass transfer between the alcohol and the oils is considerably enhanced, and the reaction is not affected by the presence of free fatty acids in the raw materials. Nevertheless, the high pressure and temperature under which...
BACKGROUND
In the past, process safety has improved safety issues in chemical plants; today, it is essential to consider safety aspects in any process plant. Furthermore, the production of value‐added products through biotechnological methods has increased, and safety is usually not considered in this kind of process design. The biotechnological pr...
Energy integration is a tool which allows reducing the heating and cooling requirements for production processes. This is particularly important in the processes for production of biofuels, since such processes are expected to have low environmental impact, which can be achieved by reducing the need for steam and cooling water. It is common to perf...
Modular biorefineries correspond to prefabricated units that are assembled on-site and mounted on a steel structure or shipped from the manufacturer. Although the large-capacity biorefineries have typically been stick-built (where the major units of the biorefineries are constructed and assembled on site), there is a growing attention to modular bi...
Production of biodiesel can be performed by using supercritical alcohols as reactants, avoiding the use of catalysts. Such processes show high reaction rates and have the advantage of treating raw materials with high contents of free fatty acids or water. Thus, supercritical treatments are appropriate strategies to transform low-cost raw materials....
In some fermentation systems, whey components (lactose, proteins and minerals) can produce isopentyl acetate (IA). An analysis of the best conditions for IA production with Kluyveromyces marxianus was developed in this work. The experiment design was two-factor and three-level design based on a response surface methodology (RSM) using Design-Expert...
On April 20th, 2016, an explosion occurred in the “Pajaritos” petrochemical plant, in Coatzacoalcos, México. The accident caused 32 deaths and almost 100 workers were seriously injured. At present, there is no official information about the cause of the accident and the existent reports are confidential. This paper proposes an explanation of what h...
Biorefineries provide economic, environmental, and social benefits towards sustainable development. Because of the relatively small size of typical biorefineries compared to oil and gas processes, it is necessary to evaluate the options of decentralized (or distributed) plants that are constructed near the biomass resources and product markets vers...
The present work aimed to design a separation process for 2-phenylethanol (2-PEA) produced by whey fermentation and to evaluate its economic potential. The separation sequence consisted of a liquid–liquid extraction column followed by two distillation columns for 2-PEA purification and solvent recovery. In addition, the use of ethyl acetate as a so...
This paper presents a new approach, defined as hazard process stream index (HPSI). This index intends to improve hazard identification in the early stages of a process design project. The main objective was to intensify biofuels and bioproducts’ production processes, which involve handling flammable aqueous mixtures and combustible materials. The i...
La presencia de metales pesados e ingredientes farmacéuticos activos en los sistemas de riego con aguas residuales es un problema preocupante. Por otro parte, el uso de microalgas ha demostrado ser una alternativa sustentable potencial para estos casos. Este trabajo presenta un análisis de la potencial biorremediación de aguas residuales utilizando...
Dairy products are now part of many people's diets. In 2017 global production was 700 million tons of milk, which are marketed in the form of liquid milk (54%), yogurt and fermented milk (16%), cheese (7%) and other products. The regions of the world with the highest production are Asia (30%), the European Union (28%) and North and Central America...
Abstract
The safety of the process plant depends on the adequate separation between the assets and the hazardous units, along with the installation of protection devices. Several mathematical approaches have been proposed to reduce the risk of the explosions through the solution of the facility layout problem, but no model has included the design o...
Whey is a byproduct of the cheese industry, which is potentially dangerous for the environment if it is not treated before its discharge. An alternative use for whey is as raw material to produce compounds with high added value as 2-phenylethanol (2-PE). Experimental production of 2-PE from whey using Kluyveromices marxianus as inoculum was evaluat...
Objective: Third generation biorefineries based on microalgae biomass seem to be a great potential to supply future fuel consumption. However, technological challenges must be faced; such as microalgae harvesting, which is one of the most important bottlenecks. Several technics have been proposed to harvest microalgae such as centrifugation, flotat...
A CFD-based approach has been developed in this work to predict the overpressure produced during an explosion. An adiabatic exothermal reaction allows to compute the explosion release energy. To validate the proposed CFD approach, overpressure predictions based on this methodology are compared with results produced with the TNO-based method. It is...
Resumen Existe un gran interés en el aprovechamiento de microalgas y procariontes fotótrofos para remover contaminantes. Este potencial se ha estudiado esencialmente en cultivos suspendidos; sin embargo, los cultivos con biomasa inmovilizada en un soporte descontaminante per se, como el carbón activado, representan una opción promisoria. Aquí se pr...
Resumen México trata menos del 50% de las aguas residuales producidas. Las tecnologías actuales fueron creadas en una época donde el consumo energético era de poca importancia, por ello es necesario la búsqueda de nuevas alternativas que sean más amigables con el medio ambiente. En este sentido, una tecnología emergente con alto potencial de aplica...
La evaluación del análisis de riesgos de accidentes es de gran interés para la industria química y
petrolera; en especial, la reducción del riesgo de efecto dominó, que fue responsable de varios
accidentes catastróficos. La mayoría de los trabajos orientados en esta temática se avocan a realizar
análisis de accidentes históricos, modelos de daños e...
Several tragic industrial accidents have produced domino effects in their occurrences and, hence, several approaches have been presented to estimate the probability of their effects. Some of these approaches are focused on estimating the damage probability due to fire or explosion whereas others apply Monte Carlo simulations to predict the domino f...
An approach to reduce the probability of producing a domino effect in process industry is developed in this work. It is assumed that optimal layouts should include appropriate analysis to reduce risk during the process design stage. The model developed for this approach combines the estimation of probability of damage due to overpressure, proposed...
The Dow fire and explosion index and the quantitative risk assessment methodology are applied to analyze one of the most unfortunate accidents in Mexican history: the explosion of gas storage tanks at the San Juan Ixhuatepec plant in Mexico. Additional calculations of over-pressure and thermal radiation are carried out to further explain the domino...
