Article ID Journal Published Year Pages File Type
6640576 Fuel 2013 8 Pages PDF
Abstract
The presented work analyses the feasibility of biodiesel production by transesterification of vegetable oil extracted from Cynara Cardunculus. The performance assessment of a plant with a capacity of 5000 t/year biodiesel production is carried out based on its rigorous simulation in AspenHysys®. A modular automated evaluation tool programmed in Matlab® retrieves the inventory of the energy and material inputs/outputs, and the environmental releases from the simulation results. The simulation performs a combined acid-catalyzed pretreatment and alkali-catalyzed transesterification based on the cardoon oil characterization and the kinetic data extracted from published experimental studies. The performance of the plant is optimized considering four potential alternatives. The Eco-indicator 99 methodology is used for the impact assessment, achieving similar results to other vegetable sources of biodiesel. With respect to the economic study, a profitability analysis yields better results than the reported in previous works for oils of other agricultural crops, identifying two critical factors: the biodiesel sale price and the plant capacity.
Related Topics
Physical Sciences and Engineering Chemical Engineering Chemical Engineering (General)
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