Chemical Engineering Aspects of Biodiesel Production I. Biofuels, Biodiesel Properties and Production Technology Fundamentals

摘要

The common industrial process of biodiesel production is a sequence of particular unit operationsstarting with raw material preparation, followed by transesterification reaction stage andending with reaction mixture separation and treatment. The main product is biodiesel of prescribedquality while the treatment of glycerol and salt containing phase is carried out so that theby-products obtained maximize profitability of the entire undertaking.The biodiesel production process is often analysed by people of various profiles without properengineering backgrounds, so that qualitative descriptions are prevailing in the literature. Oppositeto that approach, promoted in this paper are the chemical engineering aspects of biodieselproduction technology. That approach has not attracted adequate attention so far despite theeminently chemical engineering nature rather than the chemical nature of that process. This willbe elaborated in a three-part series. In this, the first one, the necessity of replacing fossil fuleswith renewable fuels is explained and the biodiesel production put into that context. In particular,the characteristics of industrial biodiesel production are delineated along with the physicaland chemical characteristics of homogeneously catalysed transesterification. The systematicapproach to the scale-up procedure is described as well.