Simulation Research Of Biodiesel Production

Recently,with the increasing depletion of fossil energy and soaring demand in fuel energy,the production of biodiesel has gained growing attention.The key point on the industrial application of mass production on biodiesel is the net energy and environment profit and economic competitiveness with the steady food supply.Compared with the enzymatic synthesis of biodiesel,the main advantage of chemical methods in the production of biodiesel is the lower production cost,the controllability and higher conversion of raw oil.For the sake of higher efficiency,it is meaningful to do some research in the chemical methods.However,the high energy consumption has become one of the problems that lay on the way of industrial application.In this paper,the retrofitted thermally coupled reactive distillation process is modelled in Aspen Plus process simulation.According to the characteristics of the thermal coupling reactive distillation,two thermally coupled configurations(side-stripper,side-rectifier)are established in biodiesel production.The sensitivity analysis of alcohol/ester feed locations,reflux ratio,reaction zone location and other parameters are finished to determine the initial value of each parameter for further optimization.In addition,the biodiesel production by reactive absorption is studied preliminarily.Finally,comparisons on the thermodynamic efficiency,energy conservation,and the total annual cost of conventional reactive distillation and thermally coupled reactive distillation are studied.The results show that,compared with conventional reactive distillation process,different thermal coupling reaction distillation columns can not only improve the thermodynamic efficiency and also gain energy saving and the total cost reduction.