Evaluation of hydrolysis–esterification biodiesel production from wet microalgae

Abstract

Wet microalgae hydrolysis–esterification route has the advantage to avoid the energy-intensive units (e.g. drying and lipid extraction) in the biodiesel production process. In this study, techno-economic evaluation of hydrolysis–esterification biodiesel production process was carried out and compared with conventional (usually including drying, lipid extraction, esterification and transesterification) biodiesel production process. Energy and material balance of the conventional and hydrolysis–esterification processes was evaluated by Aspen Plus. The simulation results indicated that drying (2.36MJ/L biodiesel) and triolein transesterification (1.89MJ/L biodiesel) are the dominant energy-intensive stages in the conventional route (5.42MJ/L biodiesel). By contrast, the total energy consumption of hydrolysis–esterification route can be reduced to 1.81MJ/L biodiesel, and approximately 3.61MJ can be saved to produce per liter biodiesel.