Abstract
Biodiesel production may provide a sustainable route to reduce environmental pollution caused by fossil fuel consumption. In order to minimize environmental impacts of biodiesel production, the chemical process should be optimized to minimize waste generation and energy consumption. Therefore, it is important to design biodiesel chemical reactions and processes using green chemistry and green engineering principles to develop sustainable chemical processes. This study provides the results of the synergistic effect of microwave and ultrasound irradiations to produce biodiesel using ethanol or methanol as the alcohol donor. The biodiesel yields are presented along with their respective green metrics, such as atom economy, environmental factor (E-factor), atom economy (utilization) or atomic efficiency, mass intensity, reaction mass efficiency, atom utilization, and stoichiometric factor. These green metrics are crucial to determine the sustainability and environmental impact of biodiesel production. Evaluation of these green metrics indicates that methanol is a better alternative for biodiesel production provided it is derived from renewable sources. Sustainability indicator concepts used for biodiesel production in this study can be applied to various biofuels and other chemical reaction designs, synthesis and process development.
Highlights
In recent years, there has been a concerted effort across the scientific community to produce biofuels in an environmentally friendly and sustainable manner [1,2,3]
This section discusses the results from the evaluation of green chemistry metrics for biodiesel
This section discusses the results from the evaluation of green chemistry metrics for biodiesel production under the synergistic effect of microwave and ultrasound using ethanol and methanol as production under the synergistic effect of microwave and ultrasound using ethanol and methanol as solvents
Summary
There has been a concerted effort across the scientific community to produce biofuels in an environmentally friendly and sustainable manner [1,2,3]. Engineering principles have been adopted to achieve this goal These two sets of principles are primarily oriented towards reaction design and optimization with respect to materials and energy usage, waste reduction and economic feasibility. These principles focus on minimal use of toxic and hazardous chemicals and maximum safety practices. These principles are commonly applied to evaluate the performances of individual chemical reactions, chemical processes and chemical synthesis design and plans in various chemistry, chemical and process engineering disciplines. This research article focuses on the use of green chemistry metrics for evaluating a biodiesel production process
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