The 13th Asia Pacific Confederation of Chemical Engineering Congress

APCChE 2010 October 5-8, 2010, Taipei

Multi-objective Optimization of a Bio-diesel Production Plant

Shivom Sharma and G. P. Rangaiah* Department of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering National University of Singapore, Singapore 117576 *Corresponding Authors E-mail: chegpr@nus.edu.sg Keywords: Bio-diesel; Multi-objective Optimization; Differential Evolution; Taboo List; Hysys. Abstract Bio-diesel is a mixture of fatty acid methyl esters (FAME), which are produced by the transesterification of vegetable and animal fats. Bio-diesel is biodegradable, non-toxic, and free of sulfur, and it does not cause much harm to the environment. Glycerol is the main by-product of this process, which is an ingredient in the production of soaps. The traditional bio-diesel production plants use a homogenous acid or alkali catalyst, which produces aqueous acid or alkali waste after the neutralization step. This trans-esterification reaction is more efficient and faster for an alkali catalyst in comparison to an acid catalyst; but it requires absence of free fatty acid (FFA) in the feed. Waste vegetable oils are cheaper than vegetable oils, but they contain a high amount of FFA. Hence, alkali catalyzed process cannot be used for producing biodiesel from waste vegetable oils. Canakci and Van Gerpen (2001) combined the advantages of both the alkali and acid catalyzed processes where waste vegetable oil was first treated in the presence of an acid catalyst (esterification) followed by an alkali catalyst (trans-esterification). Heterogeneous catalyst does not produce any aqueous waste, and it can be easily separated from the reaction mixture. Singh and Fernando (2007) modeled the kinetics of trans-esterification using heterogeneous metal oxide catalyst (e.g., MgO, MnO2, etc.). Based on the study of West et al. (2008), it can be concluded that heterogeneous catalyzed process is a promising process to produce bio-diesel. Figure 1 shows a schematic of bio-diesel production plant using a heterogeneous catalyst. Catalytic reactor, distillation columns, solid catalyst separator and three-phase separator are the main process units in the production of bio-diesel. Recently, a number of researchers have worked on reducing bio-diesel production cost. Hass et al. (2006) developed a process model to estimate the cost of bio-diesel production using an alkali catalyst. West et al. (2008) analyzed four alternative processes (acid catalyzed, alkali catalyzed, heterogeneous acid catalyzed and supercritical) for producing bio-diesel from waste vegetable oil, and conducted an economic analysis for each process. Their study concluded that heterogeneous acid catalyzed process is superior to the other three processes. Bio-diesel production using an acid or alkali catalyst has been optimized for single objective [Ghadge and Raheman, 2006; Myint et al., 2009]. Very recently, Nicola and Moglie (2010) optimized two variants of alkaline trans-esterification of refined vegetable oil for two objectives, namely, minimum energy consumption during processing and better product quality, simultaneously. The process was simulated in ASPEN Plus, and a multiobjective genetic algorithm (modeFRONTIER 4.1.1) was used to optimize this process. Optimization of a heterogeneous catalyzed bio-diesel production process, particularly for multiple objectives, has not been reported in the literature. Hence, the present study will optimize the design and operation of a heterogeneous catalyzed bio-diesel production process for four important objectives, namely, minimum total annual cost, minimum energy consumption, maximum bio-diesel purity, and maximum glycerol purity. The possible decision variables for this optimization study are methanol recycle ratio, reaction conditions, and design and operation variables in distillation columns. In this study, bio-diesel production plant (Figure 1) will be simulated in the Hysys simulator, where catalytic reactor will be modeled using the kinetics given in Singh and Fernando (2007) to capture the effect of reactor operating conditions on the various objectives.

The 13th Asia Pacific Confederation of Chemical Engineering Congress

APCChE 2010 October 5-8, 2010, Taipei

Evolutionary multi-objective optimization (MOO) techniques have been successfully applied to many chemical engineering and related applications [Masuduzzaman and Rangaiah, 2009]. MOO techniques give a set of equally good (Pareto-optimal) solutions. In this study, MOO of a heterogeneous catalyzed bio-diesel production process will be optimized using an MS-Excel based multi-objective differential evolution with taboo list (MODE-TL). Findings of this study will be presented and discussed in the conference.

Recycled Methanol FAME (Bio-diesel) Methanol Reactor Triolein Heterogeneous Catalyst Three Phase Separator Distillation Column Methanol Distillation Column

Catalyst Separator

Glycerol Solid Catalyst

Triolein

Figure 1: Schematic of bio-diesel production process using a heterogeneous acid catalyst References 1. Canakci M. and Van Gerpen G. Bio-diesel Production from Oils and Fats with High Free Fatty Acids, Transactions of the ASAE, 44, 1429-1436, 2001. 2. Hass M. J., McAloon A. J., Yee W. C. and Foglia T. A. A Process Model to Estimate Bio-diesel Production Costs, Bioresource Technology, 97, 671-678, 2006. 3. Ghadge S. V. and Raheman H. Procees Optimization for Bio-diesel Production from Mahua (Madhuca Indica) Oil using Response Surface Methodology, Bioresource Technology, 97, 379384, 2006. 4. Masuduzzaman and Rangaiah, G. P. Multi-objective Optimization Applications in Chemical Engineering, in Rangaiah, G. P. (editor), Multi-objective Optimization: Techniques and Applications in Chemical Engineering, World Scientific, 2009. 5. Nicola G. D., Moglie M., Pacetti M. and Santori G. Bioenergy II: Modeling and Multi-objective Optimization of Different Bio-diesel Production Processes, Int. J. Chemical Reactor Engineering, 8, 2010. 6. Singh A. K. and Fernando S. D. Reaction Kinetics of Soybean Oil Trans-esterification using Heterogeneous Metal Oxide Catalysts, Chem. Eng. Technol., 30(12), 1716-1720, 2007. 7. Myint L. L. and El-Halwagi M. M. Process Analysis and Optimization of Bio-diesel Production from Soybean Oil, Clean Techno. Environ. Policy, 11, 263-276, 2009. 8. West A. H., Posarac D. and Ellis N. Assessment of Four Bio-diesel Production Process using Hysys.Plant, Bioresource Technology, 99, 6587-6601, 2008.