Design and Retrofitting of Ultrasound Intensified and Ionic Liquid
Catalyzed In Situ Algal Biodiesel Production
Abstract
In this study, new processes are designed for ultrasound assisted in
situ algal biodiesel production using ionic liquid catalyst. Process
retrofitting is then conducted using a divided-wall column (DWC) and
multistage vapor recompression (MVR). Later, comparative analysis in
terms of capital cost, cost of manufacturing (COM), cost of biodiesel,
and carbon emission is presented. This study shows that the biodiesel
cost is linearly dependent on the cost of feedstock and process
economics can be improved by converting glycerol to triacetin. The
process with DWC and MVR resulted in a significant saving in COM
(13.84%), biodiesel cost (18.24%), utility cost (45.44%) and carbon
emissions (45.84%) than those in its counterpart. New major
contributions of this work are 1) process design for a novel ultrasound
assisted and ionic liquid catalyzed algal biodiesel production, 2)
implementation of DWC and MVR and 3) investigation of the uncertainty in
the thermodynamic property.