Thermodynamic analysis of biodiesel production with catalyst and non-catalyst process: incase energy analysis

Abstract

Biodiesel production from renewable resources needs a certain amount of energy Input. The effectiveness of biodiesel production depends on the energy ratio, i.e. the ratio of energy contained in the biodiesel to the energy input during production, including energy content in the feedstock. The objective of the study is aimed to evaluate the energy ratio in biodiesel production. The input and output energy were analyzed for each process (catalyst and analysist). Materials required in biodiesel production was evaluated in term of their energy content. The equipment used to obtain data on the non-catalytic biodiesel production process was a prototype bubble column reactor designed by the Department of Global Agricultural Sciences at The University of Tokyo, Japan and data on the catalytic biodiesel production process was obtained from the Center for Design and Technology System Engineering, BPPT Serpong,by the design of the equipment owned by the institution. The results showed that the energy ratio and the energy needed to produce per kilogram of biodiesel using the non-catalytic production method with a modified process were 1.00 and 39.63 MJ/kg while using the catalytic method were 0.98 and 41.05 MJ/kg, respectively. The non-catalytic production method with a modified process is better than the catalytic method in energy ratio. The energy needed to produce per kilogram of biodiesel due to the heat exchanger is critical for the performance improvement of the modified non-catalytic process.