the effect of reactor configuration and performance on production of biodiesel from vegetable oil

in this paper, to address the effect of reactor performance and configuration of biodiesel production on subsequent process parameters (including mass & energy consumption, required facilities etc.) two diverse biodiesel production processes (from plant oil) were implemented/designed using aspen hysys v7.2. two series reactors were taken into account in these designs where in the first and second processes, the overall conversion were set to be 97.7% and 70% respectively. comparative analysis of results showed that in the second design, further amount of 10% oil and 28.16% methanol were obtained; furthermore, cold and hot energies were increased to almost 204.48% and 151.74% respectively, while amending merely a few numbers of facilities like distillation tower and heat exchangers. to reduce mass & energy consumption, mass/thermal integration method was employed. in the mass integration, the optimum operation condition and the reduction of material loss were the major points of focus; while in thermal integration, designing of exchanger network using pinch technology were followed out. moreover, applying integration method showed that in first design, material, cold/hot energy were decreased by 49.81%, 17.46% and 36.17% respectively; while in the second design, oil, methanol, cold energy and hot energy were decreased by 9%, 60.57% 19.62% and 36.58% respectively.