Construction waste management: For biodiesel production process

Abstract

The construction industry is one of the most important in today’s world, having a significant impact on any country’s economy and society. As per a current worldwide prediction, it will be a key contributor to worldwide economic expansion in this decade until 2030, with output expected to be 35% greater than in the past 10 years to 2020. Making a significant contribution to societal needs by improving people’s quality of life. Otherwise, and based on volume, this industry accounts for 35 % of global Dioxide (Co2) emissions, approximately 30 % of greenhouse gas emissions, and generating 45 % to 65 % of waste disposed of in landfills. With global environmental awareness growing, the construction industry is starting to take action to decrease its environmental impact. Suitable construction and demolition waste management can provide significant benefits in aspects of sustainability and life quality, as well as significant benefits to the global construction industry. Diesel is the utility player in the construction industry, powering more than three-fourths of all heavy-duty trucks and being the major source of greenhouse emissions, so a suitable alternative had to be found. Biodiesel as a suitable alternative fuel has interesting properties such as renewability, non-toxicity, biodegradability, and environmental friendliness. The cost of feedstocks is one of the vital challenges with biodiesel production. Recycling construction and demolition waste to produce biodiesel as a raw material or as a co-solvent to improve biodiesel quality and operation conditions, such as carbon dioxide and calcium oxide, would save a significant number of resources, lowering operation and production costs. The focus of this paper is to manage the construction and demolition waste and find the suitable exploitation of it, by technical comparison between crude tall oil and waste cooking oil with Co2 as a co-solvent has been applied and simulated in ASPEN HYSYS® V9. The use of non-catalytic transesterification to generate biodiesel from crude tall oil and waste cooking oil with Co2 from construction and demolition waste has been recognized as an efficient technique. It has a few benefits over traditional catalytic transesterification, including the elimination of catalyst preparation and separation of negative issues. HYSYS® was used to generate detailed operating specifications and unit design details for each process. These processes were applied to a technological assessment to define their technical benefits and drawbacks. The findings indicate that the crude tall oil supercritical process recommended, as it is the lowest in terms of the number of equipment used by 30% and the more economical in the amount of using raw materials by 80% in a quarter of the reaction time compared by waste cooking oil with Co2 process under somewhat similar operating conditions. However, all processes were proven to be able to produce a high-quality biodiesel product that matched EN14214 biodiesel standards and requirements.