Energy Conversion and Management, Vol.171, 1712-1720, 2018
Techno-economic feasibility of producing biodiesel from acidic oil using sulfuric acid and calcium oxide as catalysts
Biodiesel is becoming one of the best altemative fuels to substitute conventional diesel fuel for its environmental and fuel benefits. However, its full-fledged substitution to conventional diesel is hindered mainly due to its high cost of production. More than 85% of the production cost is attributed to feedstock cost. This forces to look for alternative feedstock at lower cost, which usually do have higher free fatty acid content. A number of investigations have been done to evaluate the technical and economic efficiency of biodiesel production from such acidic oil. Accordingly, in this study, three alternative production processes using two catalysts have been designed for techno-economic analysis. Sulfuric acid (H2SO4) catalyzed Transesterification and Esterification of Acidic oil; Calcium oxide (CaO) Catalyzed Transesterification of Acidic oil; and CaO catalyzed Transesterification with Pre-Esterification of Acidic oil with H2SO4. Super Pro design and Aspen Plus softwares were used to perform the conceptual design and simulation of the different alternatives. The techno-economic competitiveness of three different scenarios were evaluated. The technical parameters were amount and quality of biodiesel and glycerol as well as the amount of biodiesel produced per feedstock used. The economic parameters considered were Total Investment Cost, Operating Cost, Unit Cost of Production, NPV, ROI and Payback time. The CaO catalyzed process could show better economic performances.