(9c) A Novel Biodiesel Production Process Using Heterogeneous Catalyst

Tremendous efforts have been carried out to develop alternative fuels. However, the availability and the cost of the feedstock, energy conversion efficiency, capital and operating cost, environmental and safety concerns have always been challenging issues to the process developers. Biodiesel is a renewable fuel suitable for both centralized and distributed production at a wide range of scales. However, traditional biodiesel production processes have many environmental and safety concerns as it involves hazardous chemicals, the cleaning step of the by-product is expensive and the consumption of water is high. To overcome these problems, a novel heterogeneous catalyst process for the production of biodiesel was developed using computer-aided design method. A comprehensive sustainability assessment was conducted based on the economic viability, energy conversion efficiency, environmental impacts and societal considerations. It is demonstrated that the new process performs better than the traditional process along all the dimensions.