Evaluation of Biodiesel Production Process from Palm Oil (Eleais Guineensis) using Exergy Analysis Methodology

The search for cleaner energy sources has motivated the development of fuels from oil crops such as soybeans, sunflowers, rapeseeds, palms, tartago, and others. One of the most important processes being developed in large-scale is biodiesel production from African Palm. However, one of the most critical disadvantages of biodiesel is a lower production of combustion energy output compared to fossil fuels and consequently, higher energy requirements for obtaining an energy unit. In order to improve the biodiesel from palm oil production process, the stages of acid esterification, basic transesterification, biodiesel washing and purification were simulated in the software Aspen ONETM 8.4. The full compositional profile of palm oil (Eleais Guineensis) was included, considering both homogeneous and heterogeneous triglycerides. With the help of software, thermodynamic properties such as enthalpy, entropy, and Gibbs free energy were determined for all streams. Then, chemical, physical and thermal exergies for the streams of the process were calculated - i. e., the exergy destroyed in the process. The overall exergy efficiency was 41 %. The analysis also allowed the identification of the high consumption of utilities and the exergy losses. These can be reduced using process integration, yielding an increase in the global efficiency of the palm oil biodiesel production process.