Techno Economical Assessment of Biodiesel Alternatives

J.M. MARCHETTI; V.U. MIGUEL; A.F. ERRAZU

Tomar, Portugal

Congreso; Bioenergy - I: From Concept to Commercial Processes; 2006

Biodiesel has became an attractive fuel diesel substitute due to its environmentals benefits and because it could be made from renewable resources, however the high production cost remains as the main problem to market penetration for biodiesel in blends or as a neat fuel. More than 60% of the production cost is associated with the feedstock itself and consequently efforts are focused on developing technologies capable to use lower-cost feedstocks, such as recycled cooking oils and waste from animal processing operations. The greatest issue is the increased level of free fatty acids found in recycled materials. The conventional technology employs NaOH or Na methoxide as basic catalyst for the transesterification. But transesterification processes has several drawbacks working with feedstocks that contain high levels of free fatty acids. So, homogeneous acidic catalysts are being used for processing such feedstocks. Both processes are associated with additional down streaming for catalyst neutralization and biodiesel purification. A lot of studies are conducted to employ heterogeneous catalyst, such acidic or basic resins or immobilized lipases in pursuit of develop a process allowing less downstreaming, handling of different feedstocks and operation at lower temperatures. Our work involves a conceptual design, a techno-economic analysis and comparison of these technological alternatives. A process simulator was used to propose, design and simulate the processes. With these models, we were able to analyze differents sceneries to evaluate productivity, energy consumption, economic competitiveness, and environmental impacts of each process.