In-situ transesterification of rapeseed and cost indicators for biodiesel production

In the present work the alkali in-situ transesterification of rapeseed with methanol for the production of biodiesel fuel was studied. Experiments were designed to determine how variations in molar ratio of methanol to oil in seeds, amount of alkali catalyst, time and temperature affected the yield. Good results (90%) conversion of seed lipid to fatty acid methyl ester was obtained at 0.02 N catalyst concentration, 720/1 methanol to rapeseed oil molar ratio, 1 h reaction time and 65 °C reaction temperature. The results were in agreement with the values measured by 1H NMR spectroscopy. A mass balance and a preliminary feasibility study were investigated. A techno-economic analysis of the process for production of biodiesel from rapeseed with a capacity of 50,000 t/yr was presented to investigate the profitability indicators of the production capacity. The techno-economic indicators showed that total capital investment of $16,065,000, gross profit/year of $14,630,300, and percentage simple rate of return (%SRR) was 79.5% for a constant estimated price of $945/t while the specific biodiesel prices for SRR% of 10 and 50 were $722 and $850 respectively.