Biodiesel Process Flowsheets & Simulations
Explore 3 validated, solved Biodiesel simulation flowsheets in MaximaLabs — real components: triolein_ooo, tripalmitin_ppp, methanol, methyl_oleate, methyl_palmitate, glycerol. Open any one directly in your browser.
Solved via: PENG-ROBINSON.
Biodiesel: alkali-catalysed transesterification with methanol recovery
Continuous base-catalysed (NaOH/methoxide) transesterification of a refined vegetable oil to fatty acid methyl esters — the classic FAME biodiesel process. The oil is modeled as a 70/30 triolein/tripalmitin blend (the C₁₈:1 and C₁₆:0 triglycerides that dominate soy, canola and rendered-fat feedstocks); each is transesterified with methanol at a 6:1 molar ratio and 60 C in a two-reactor cascade at 97% conversion per stage, the standard industrial staging that drives the equilibrium toward the esters. Excess methanol is then vacuum-flashed overhead for recycle, and the wash/settling step splits the heavy glycerol phase from the ester product. The FAME product comes out at 96.9 wt% ester content — just over the EN 14214 minimum of 96.5 wt% — and the crude glycerin at ~85 wt% glycerol, typical of the crude co-product that goes on to a glycerin refining column.
8 unit ops • PENG-ROBINSON
117 0
View & openEnzymatic biodiesel from high-FFA waste oil (lipase)
Immobilised-lipase (e.g. Novozym 435) production of FAME from a waste feedstock — used cooking oil / rendered fat carrying ~17 mol% free fatty acid. This is the feed slate a renewable-fuels producer actually buys, and it is exactly where the conventional alkali route breaks down: NaOH or methoxide saponifies free fatty acid into soap (the databank even carries sodium palmitate), which destroys yield and emulsifies the glycerol settling step, so a high-FFA feed needs an acid-esterification pretrain before it can be base-catalysed at all. A lipase does both reactions at once and at 40 C: it transesterifies the triglyceride to esters plus glycerol, and it esterifies the free fatty acid into more product rather than losing it to soap. Both reactions are carried explicitly here, so the FFA ends up as methyl palmitate instead of as a loss. The result: 97.9 wt% ester content (EN 14214 requires >= 96.5 wt%) with the free fatty acid taken down to under 0.1 mol% of the product, i.e. a low acid value, from a feed the alkali route could not process directly. Esterification also makes one mole of water per mole of FFA converted, which is why the vacuum flash takes methanol and water overhead together — water inhibits the enzyme and has to leave the loop.
8 unit ops • PENG-ROBINSON
116 0
View & openFatty-ester vacuum fractionation
Biodiesel methyl esters (C₁₆ / C₁₈) split at 0.05 bar — vacuum keeps the bottoms under 515 K; near-total C₁₆ recovery overhead and ~98% C₁₈ in the bottoms (the two components' relative volatility caps bottoms purity there — more stages/reflux do not push it further). From the ChemSep casebook (Fatty_Acids, as methyl esters).
4 unit ops • PENG-ROBINSON
221 0
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