Plantwide control strategy for a biodiesel production process from Jatropha curcas oil with variable composition

Abstract

Jatropha curcas and castor oils are non-edible materials that can be used to produce biodiesel. When designing a biodiesel production process, an important aspect is that each raw material has a different lipid profile and different free fatty acids content. This may affect the performance of the production process. Nevertheless, with a proper design-control strategy, a given process can handle the variations on the composition of the raw material, maintaining the quality of the product. In this work, a strategy for the design and control of a process to produce biodiesel from Jatropha curcas oil with variations in triglycerides’ composition of the raw material. The process is first designed in Aspen Plus V. 8.8. Then, control loops are established in Aspen Dynamics, applying disturbances of ± 10% to the feed flowrate to test the proposed loops and the parameters of the controllers. The compositions on the feed streams are varied, maintaining the same structural design for the equipment on the process. The effect of these variations on the process operation is assessed, and the capability of the proposed control structure to stabilize the process while maintaining the product quality is verified. In general terms, the proposed control structure allows keeping the product with the desired quality, stabilizing the process after variations in the composition of the Jatropha curcas oil.