Algerian Journal of Engineering Research
Volume 5, Numéro 2, Pages 7-11
2022-03-15

Techno-economic Study Of The Production Of Biodiesel From Frying Oil

Authors : Kerras Halima . Nekkab Chahra . Merouani Rayane . Outili Nawel .

Abstract

Biodiesel is a clean and renewable fuel produced from a fatty biomass source such as vegetable oils or animal fats. The use of waste frying oil, instead of virgin oil, to produce biodiesel is an effective way to reduce the raw material cost and respect green chemistry principles. The main objective of this work is to valorise this frying waste by producing energy and eliminating a pollution source to preserve the environment. In this context, a techno-economic study was carried out for the synthesis of biodiesel from frying oils collected in the restaurants of the university on our campus. Firstly, an experiment optimizing the operating conditions was carried out, and the results obtained were exploited on a semi-industrial scale for an economic study using the SuperPro Designer V9 software. In this work, we investigated the effect of varying the amount of used oil to convert to biodiesel on the results of the cost analysis. The objective is to estimate the quantity from which the production process will be profitable. The collected oils were first characterized before proceeding with experiments using the Surface Response Methodology (RSM) to determine the optimal conditions for biodiesel production. A transesterification process with methanol and a potassium hydroxide catalyst was used. The results of the RSM design showed that the optimal conditions were 45 °C, 1.4 wt% of KOH, a methanol/oil molar ratio of 6: 1 and a reaction time of 30 minutes. These optimum values are in good agreement with literature values for transesterification of soybean oil. In the modeling part, the experimental protocol followed with all its stages is transformed into a set of operations for a semi-industrial process. This flowsheet is represented under SupePro Designer and material and energy balances as well as economic calculations were then made. The results of the study showed that the process becomes profitable when the amount to be treated is greater than 200 kg/batch. Variation in the quantities of waste oil was carried out and its influence on key parameters of the economic study is presented.

Keywords

Biodiesel ; transesterification ; economic evaluation ; superpro designer ; renewable energy