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Article history: The overall process of biodiesel synthesis from vegetable oil and methanol is spontaneous according to
Received 28 January 2014 Gibbs energy values. Therefore, a classical process scheme consisting of reactor followed by distillation
Received in revised form columns train is grouped in a single hybrid reactive extraction column. Minimum energy consumption is
30 October 2014
calculated using Pinch Analysis, taking into account the minimum energy thermodynamically required
Accepted 5 November 2014
Available online xxx
by process units, e.g. distillation. Process Integration decreases dramatically the minimum energy re-
quirements. Using Pinch Analysis, a useful tool is provided to calculate the minimum energy re-
quirements of alternative processes, the effect of inclusion of the distillation column is to be underlined.
Keywords:
Energy efficiency
The intensified process provides biodiesel and glycerol valorisation with very low energy consumption.
Energy conservation A conceptual design of hybrid reactive extraction column useful for several input oils and fats is pro-
Heat engine posed, considering first pure triglycerides as raw materials and then complex mixtures of triglycerides as
Pinch analysis in real oil compositions.
Short chain fatty acids © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Biodiesel additives
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.energy.2014.11.013
0360-5442/© 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Please cite this article in press as: Pleşu V, et al., Process intensification in biodiesel production with energy reduction by pinch analysis, Energy
(2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.energy.2014.11.013
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Table 1 Table 3
Some biodiesel compositions limited by legislation. Mass percent of fatty acid for several kinds of oils.
Table 2
Palm oil feed composition.
Compound AspenPlus® x
identifier (Mass)
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Fig. 2. The increase of number of double bounds decrease the biodiesel purity.
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Fig. 4. Conversion along the column stages depending on the chain length.
linolein) has more double bounds than OOO (triolein), but con- extractive-reactive column of five equilibrium stages. The mass
version slightly higher, according to the kinetic model imple- fraction of methyl esters decreases when the number of double
mented in Aspen Plus®. bounds in the triglyceride increases (Fig. 2). The decrease of this
The reaction mixture splits in two liquid phases, and therefore a mass fraction is much influenced when the number of double
counter-current flow of reactants is feasible. It is commonly bounds is greater than three. When there are more than 16 carbon
accepted that countercurrent flow is usually more efficient than co- atoms in the chain, the ester mass fraction decreases more abruptly
current flow of reactants. The high amount of the reactant at the (Fig. 3). With 5 reactive stages, a practical total conversion is ob-
entrance displaces the other reactant to high conversions at the tained for any triglyceride and the ester mass fraction is above 90%.
exit. Nevertheless, the countercurrent flow pattern means that it The main impurity in the obtained biodiesel is due to the solubility
cannot be treated any more as a PFR but as equilibrium stages. Its of methanol in biodiesel. However, the presence of methanol in
model is closer to the reactive distillation column than to a PFR and biodiesel is not a problem as it is extracted in the non-reactive
liquid phase equilibrium becomes as important as the reaction ki- stages by glycerol.
netics. The feed is stoichiometric and the 1 kmol/h of methanol is In the case of POO (palmitin-diolein) and PPP (tripalmitin),
diluted with a glycerol stream of 1 kmol/h because glycerol is with just one stage, conversions higher than 90% are already
required as extractive agent in the non-reactive section of the attained. The triglycerides conversion and mass fraction variation
proposed process. along the number of stages, depending on carbon chain length, are
The influence of chain length and number of double bonds is presented in Figs. 4 and 5, respectively. According to these results,
determined when the reactants flow in counter-current in an five reactive stages provide enough biodiesel purity, although a
Fig. 5. Methyl esters mass fraction along the column stages depending on the chain length.
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Fig. 8. Influence of the extractive agent flow rate on methanol content in final
biodiesel.
Fig. 9. Influence of the extractive agent flow rate on monoglycerides content in final
Fig. 7. Influence of methanol excess on biodiesel purity. biodiesel.
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Fig. 11. Influence of the catalyst amount. Fig. 13. Influence of chain length on the energy requirements.
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The reactants, oil and methanol, flow in counter-current in the extractive agent flow rate could be 0.077 kg glycerol/kg palm oil
reactive extraction column section. Methanol is the lowest density which is in the range defined previously for pure triglycerides with
compound, glycerol is the highest density compound, and therefore 14 theoretical stages (5 reactive þ 9 non-reactive). The 5 reactive
the polar phase methanol-glycerol flows downwards, as the reac- stages at the lower part of the column are used to achieve the
tion proceeds and becomes richer in glycerol. Methanol is fed at the complete palm oil conversion, and the 9 non-reactive stages at the
top of the reactive section and glycerol is collected at the bottom of upper part is used to separate the biodiesel from methanol by
the reactive section. On the other hand, the vegetable oil is fed at extraction with glycerol.
the bottom of the reactive section and impurified FAME is collected Fig. 18 shows the composition profile for the polar phase. The
at the top of the non-reactive section. Methanol is partially soluble main components of this phase are methanol and glycerol, the
in FAME and therefore a non-reactive extraction section at the latter flowing from the top to the bottom, also having the higher
upper part of the column is required to extract it from the obtained density. MeOH increases its composition from top to bottom of
biodiesel, using glycerol as extraction agent. This is obtained by non-reactive section (from stage 14 to stage 5). In agreement with
recycling part of the glycerol product stream collected in the bot- reaction scheme, MeOH reacts with glycerides forming FAME and
tom of the column. The numbering of column stages is performed glycerol in the reactive section (from stage 5 to stage 1), as illus-
from bottom to top. trated in Fig. 18.
Fig. 16 shows the evolution of the composition versus the Fig. 19 shows the composition profile for the non-polar phase. In
number of reactive stages in a reactive extraction section, keeping the first stage, most of the triglycerides are converted to mono-
constant the number of non-reactive stages. For simplicity pur- glycerides, which react to biodiesel in the second stage. Although in
poses, the compounds are grouped in biodiesel, triglycerides, di- the first stage the composition of biodiesel is lower, in the second
glycerides and monoglycerides without representing in the figure stage the mass fraction is higher than 0.9 and remains constant
the type of fatty acid present. Biodiesel is the main component. through the reactive phase. Between stages 3e6, methanol con-
Although an almost total conversion is achieved using only few centration passes through a maximum, enabling high conversion.
stages, the biodiesel stream purity is limited due to the methanol Between stages 6e14, which are non-reactive, methanol concen-
feed in counter-current. Nevertheless, the main aim of reactive tration decreases until the desired value, under 0.2%. In the
stages is to convert the vegetable oil to biodiesel (99% in this extractive phase, the biodiesel composition rises to achieve the
system). required value (99.6%). As mentioned previously, for simplicity, the
A conversion of 99.2% of palm oil to biodiesel can be achieved in compounds used in the simulation are presented in Figs. 16e19
5 reactive stages. Notice that a column with 5 reactive stages pro- lumped as triglycerides, diglycerides, monoglycerides, biodiesel,
vides biodiesel containing 16% methanol. This quantity can be glycerol and methanol. However, in Table 4 detailed composition
decreased to the allowed quantity of 0.2% in mass of methanol, for the input and output streams of the reactive extraction column
according to the European standards EN14214, by increasing the are presented. In Table 4, raw materials (oil and MeOH) are fed at
number of extraction stages or flow rate of extractive agent. The 25 C. Reactive extraction column operates at 60 C. Appropriate
relation between minimum glycerol flowrate and the number of utilities are used to provide this condition.
non-reactive stages allowing to obtain limiting MeOH concentra- The purity of biodiesel collected is 99.6% and the purity of
tion is shown in Fig. 17, obtained in AspenPlus®. glycerol is 88.2%. The purity of glycerol is limited by the presence of
An acceptable result is obtained for 9 non-reactive stages (99.6% a slight excess of 6.7% methanol in the feed, otherwise mathe-
of biodiesel purity as established in EU) for glycerol flow rate of matical convergence is not achieved due to the great quantity of
0.89 kmol/h for an imposed palm oil flow rate of 1.28 kmol/h. The compounds present in palm oil.
number of reactive and non-reactive stages is in agreement with Running the economic analysis in AspenPlus® with the default
the previously calculated values for pure triglycerides. A convenient settings for the classical scheme, for a biodiesel flow rate of 1051 kg/
Please cite this article in press as: Pleşu V, et al., Process intensification in biodiesel production with energy reduction by pinch analysis, Energy
(2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.energy.2014.11.013
8 V. Pleşu et al. / Energy xxx (2014) 1e15
Fig. 15. Hybrid reactive-extraction column: (a) proposed process scheme and (b) simulation flowsheet.
h, the capital costs are of about 9,111,180 USD. For the intensified purify biodiesel and to recirculate the non-reacted oil and GLYCOL
process, the capital costs calculated in AspenPlus® are of to purify the glycerol) and one for methanol recovery (MEOHCOL)
1,951,360 USD Therefore, the capital cost for the classical process is which is recirculated to the reaction stage. In addition, an extrac-
4.6 times higher than for the intensified process. Nevertheless, tion column (WASHCOL) to separate the polar and non-polar
these values suggest that the intensified process is more advanta- phases using water is considered and a second reactor is needed
geous from economic point of view. to neutralize with H3PO4 the NaOH catalyst present in the polar
phase using. The product Na3PO4 is commonly used as fertilizer. In
3.3. Comparison of the minimum energy requirements for the Table 5, distillation columns specifications are given.
intensified process with the classical scheme Distillation columns operate at high temperature and low
pressure, involving important energy consumption, due to low
The classical scheme proposed in AspenPlus® example requires volatility of glycerol and FAME, as revealed in Table 6. However, the
3 distillation columns, two for the product purification (ESTCOL to extraction column WASHCOL operates adiabatically at 1 bar.
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Fig. 17. Minimum glycerol flowrate to obtain MeOH legal composition in biodiesel
versus number of non-reactive stages. Fig. 19. Composition profile for the non-polar phase.
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Table 4
Detailed composition for the input and output streams.
x (mass)
METHANOL 0.92707 0.00052 0.06613 0.50941
OOO 0.04699 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000
MMM 0.00366 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000
METHYL-O 0.38932 0.00002 0.00033
GLYCEROL 1.0000 0.00019 0.88242 0.48095
NaOH 0.07293 0.00000 0.04749 0.00786
PPP 0.05366 0.00001 0.00000 0.00000
METHYL-P 0.48103 0.00000 0.00075
PPS 0.01068 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000
PPO 0.29774 0.00001 0.00000 0.00000
POS 0.05091 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000
MMP 0.01540 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000
PPLI 0.09256 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000
POO 0.24112 0.00001 0.00000 0.00000
PLIO 0.10011 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000
OOS 0.02398 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000
OOLI 0.00618 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000
MPLI 0.02132 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000
METHYL-M 0.01993 0.00001 0.00007
METHYL-S 0.02934 0.00000 0.00002
METHY-LI 0.07655 0.00001 0.00009
1-M 0.00005 0.00009 0.00003
1-P 0.00123 0.00355 0.00030
1-S 0.00009 0.00001 0.00001
1-O 0.00123 0.00025 0.00016
1-LI 0.00025 0.00003 0.00002
MM 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000
PP 0.03568 0.00005 0.00000 0.00000
OO 0.00004 0.00000 0.00000
PO 0.00009 0.00000 0.00000
PLI 0.00002 0.00000 0.00000
MP 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000
PS 0.00001 0.00000 0.00000
OS 0.00001 0.00000 0.00000
LIO 0.00001 0.00000 0.00000
MLI 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000
Total Flow kg/h 1059 146 82 1062 225 171
SUMMARY x (mass)
Triglycerides 0.96432 0.00004 0.00000 0.00000
Diglycerides 0.03568 0.00022 0.00000 0.00000
Monoglycerides 0.00285 0.00393 0.00052
FAME 0.99617 0.00004 0.00126
Methanol 0.92707 0.00052 0.06613 0.50941
Glycerol 1.0000 0.00019 0.88242 0.48095
NaOH 0.07293 0.04748 0.00786
requirement to operate at low pressure is not considered. reboilers and hot streams in condensers. The very small increase
Applying the Pinch Analysis and taking into account the mini- of temperature must be positive for the reboilers, which are
mum energy requirement for the distillation columns, the hot considered as a cold stream, and negative for the condensers. As
minimum energy requirement of the system is of 28.0 kW. The the reaction is exothermic, the reactor is considered as a hot
minimum duties (condenser and reboiler duties) calculated for stream. Stream data introduced in Sprint® is shown in Fig. 22. The
the columns in Table 8 are considering a very small temperature Composite Curves taking into account the irreversibilities in
difference between the reboiler and condenser and the respective
heating and cooling fluids according to minimize the irrevers- Table 6
ibility. For better real values, the temperature of the units should Energy consumption of process equipment.
be shifted as it was made for the process streams, to take into
Equipment Type Heat (kW)
account the irreversibilities in condenser and in reboiler. The
Heat requirement MEOHCOL Reboiler 118.0
temperature shift is performed automatically when the data is
GLYCOL Reboiler 283.8
introduced in Sprint®. A very small corresponding difference of ESTCOL Reboiler 374.4
temperature (0.1 C) is used to consider the cold stream in HX1 Heat exchanger 22.0
REACTOR Reactor 15.3
TOTAL 813.5
Table 5 Heat to eliminate MEOHCOL Condenser 122.0
Distillation columns specifications. GLYCOL Condenser 261.2
ESTCOL Condenser 304.7
Name Stages Reflux ratio Pressure (bar) Treboiler ( C) Tcondenser ( C)
HX2 Heat Exchanger 0.1
MEOHCOL 7 2 0.2 59.2 28.8 B2 Heat Exchanger 9.8
GLYCOL 6 2 0.4 262.2 70.9 NEUTR Reactor 1.5
ESTCOL 6 0.95 0.1 338 148.3 TOTAL ¡699.3
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Table 7
Data extraction: hot and cold process streams for classical process scheme.
Fig. 21. Composite Curves for the classic process without considering the units, where
reboiler and condenser of distillation columns and the reactor are DTmin ¼ 40 C.
presented in Fig. 23. Then, as usual for such processes
DTmin ¼ 10 C, energy required by the units, i.e. distillation and
Table 8
reaction, are the horizontal regions of the curves. The pinch point
Minimum energy requirements of the distillation columns.
temperature is 66.1 C, but as it is shown in Fig. 23. From Sprint®
energy report hot utility target is 33 kW, cold utility target is Tc Tr h DS Dl Minimum energy
( C) ( C) (W/ C) (kW) consumption (kW)
79.3 kW, and process heat recovery is 121 kW. These values are
very low compared to the requirements of AspenPlus® base MEOHCOL 28.8 60 0.091 15.3 38.5 46.4
GLY COL 71 262.2 0.357 7.8 2.6 10.7
example without heat integration, i.e. 813.15 kW. These results
ESTCOL 148.3 338.01 0.310 1.9 0.1 2.5
underline the importance of process integration, taking into ac- REACTOR 60 7.4
count all process units.
Grand Composite Curve (Fig. 25a) indicates the potential heat
recovery inside the process (a big pocket in the hot zone, which
lowers the demand and temperature of hot utilities. Therefore, it is proposed flowsheet is a better option, considering process intensi-
possible for example to use about 25 kW hot utility with temper- fication and rational use of energy (Table 11). Furthermore, the
atures less than 150 C. Just a small amount of hot utility ~10 kW is intensified process requires a heat source of lower temperature than
needed around 300 C and a very small amount of hot utility ~3 kW the AspenPlus® base process (Fig. 25) as is shown by Grand Com-
is needed for more than 350 C. posite Curve. Minimum hot utility temperature is 70 C and
For our proposed process, the extractive stages operate at 60 C, maximum cold utility temperature is 25 C.
therefore energy should be considered to maintain constant tem-
perature (Table 9). This can be achieved using a jacketed column. 3.4. Evaluation of using the hybrid extraction column for several
Table 9 shows also that the energy is consumed mostly by the first oils
and fifth stages of the reactive zone, because oil stream and meth-
anol stream are fed at 25 C. Therefore, the non-integrated alter- The presence of FFA (free fatty acids) is not the scope of the
native process has a relatively low energy requirement 31.8 kW, present study, although it is also an important point to be consid-
compared to the basic AspenPlus® example process of 813.5 kW. It is ered as for instance J. curcas oil can contain up to 15% FFA [34]. Same
also bit lower when compared to the heat integrated AspenPlus® composition has as well as cooking oils. Excess FFAs lead to
basic process (33 kW). The composite curves of the isothermal increased catalyst requirement as well as soap formation. FFA
extraction column with heat integration of the streams (Table 10) should be esterified with an acid catalyst before being fed to the
are shown in Fig. 24. For same reasons as above, DTmin ¼ 10 C can be column. The oil compositions are approximate to triglyceride
considered. As shown in Fig. 24, in this case Composite Curves give composition (Table 12) with an equivalent amount of fatty acids
minimum hot utility requirement is 10.5 kW, minimum cold utility indicated in Table 3. The flow rate of oil fed to the process is of
is 13.6 kW, and process heat recovery is 26.2 kW. The pinch point 1 kmol/h, requiring a stoichiometric amount of methanol and
temperature for the intensified processes is 55 C. Therefore our 0.8 kmol/h glycerol.
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Fig. 22. Data input at Sprint®. From 1 to 11 are streams, from 12 to 17 are column reboilers (R) and condensers (C) and 18 is the reactor.
Biodiesel composition obtained from J. curcas oil is presented Spirulina oil composition is assimilated to be 90% PPLi (dipal-
in Table 13. The biodiesel obtained using stoichiometric methanol mitin-linolein) and 10% OOLi. The linolenic acid content has been
ratio fulfils EN 14214-legislation provision with exception of assimilated to linoleic in the process simulation because it is not in
diglycerids and glycerol content. The excessive diglycerides AspenPlus® database. An interesting result is that the main tri-
quantity is unexpected result. The diglycerides with a high mass glyceride, which appears in biodiesel, is PPO (dipalmitoyl-oleiyl-
faction are PO and PLi. These are not directly obtained by trans- glycerol), although this triglyceride is not initially present in algae
esterification of the initial triglycerides (PPS and OOLi), but by oil. This behaviour can be explained considering a trans-
recombination. This fact can be justified by the stability of the esterification process. In this way, the main triglycerides present in
compounds, e.g. PO is the more stable compound, according to biodiesel are always PPO or PLiO, independently if they are present
the enthalpy of formation. Glycerol removal is easy by water or not, in the initial oil. Contrary to the result obtained for J. curcas
extraction. J. curcas oil has been assumed as a mixture of 77% OOLi oil, biodiesel obtained from spirulina oil do not contain significant
and 23% PPS and the percent of methyl esters is 97.77% instead of amounts of diglycerides PO and PLi. The reason is that as the OOLi is
the 99.47% obtained using OOLi alone. Therefore, the presence of only a 10% of oil composition, a higher conversion is obtained with
PPS leads to a lower conversion and a higher amount of di- fewer stages.
glycerides. A slight increase of the methanol amount, higher than Spirogyra oil is assimilated to a composition of 37.86% PLiO,
the stoichiometric one, produces an increase of methyl esters 26.28% OOO, 15.75% PPS, 12.63% PPP and 7.48% MMM. An excess of
quantity, in the same time, the mass fraction of diglycerides de- methanol to 3.5 kmol/h has been required to achieve process
creases. However, a higher number of equilibrium stages is
preferred rather than the use of a methanol excess to fulfil the
biodiesel specifications.
Fig. 23. Composite curves of the classical process. Fig. 24. Composite curve of the intensified process.
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Table 10
Data extraction: hot and cold process streams for the intensified process.
Table 11
Energy requirements for classic and intensified process alternatives (DTmin ¼ 10 C).
4. Conclusions
Fig. 25. Grand composite curves for: a) the classic process scheme; b) intensified
process. Table 12
Oils and corresponding biodiesel compositions.
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Table 13 Nomenclature
Mass percent composition of biodiesel from several oils (3 kmol/h methanol is the
stoichiometric amount).
DS entropy change in the distillation column
Oil Jatropha Spirulina Spyrogira Tolypothrix DTmin pinch temperature (K)
curcas oil algae oil algae oil algae oil Qr energy required by the distillation column (kW)
Compound 3 3.3 3 3.2 3.5 3.0 Tc temperature of the distillation column condenser (K)
Methanol 0.049 0.048 0.037 0.044 0.045 0.03 Tr temperature of the distillation column reboiler (K)
Methylic 97.775 98.335 95.505 99.607 98.005 90.88 h Carnot efficiency
esters l enthalpy of vaporization for the distillate stream (kJ/
Monoglycerids 0.689 0.525 0.246 0.299 0.424 0.31
kmol)
Diglycerids 1.409 1.030 0.014 0.019 1.470 0.02
Triglycerids 0.049 0.034 4.169 0.003 0.027 8.73 R ideal gas constant (kPa m3/kmol K)
Glycerol 0.029 0.028 0.029 0.028 0.029 0.03 D distillate flow rate (kmol/s)
B bottoms flow rate (kmol/s)
xi molar composition of compound i in the corresponding
stream.
CSTR continuous stirred tank reactor
NRTL non random two liquid thermodynamic model
EU European Union
MeOH methanol
NaOH sodium hydroxide
FAME fatty acid methyl ester
FFA free fatty acids
O oleic acid (C18:1)
M myristic acid (C14:0)
P palmitic acid (C16:0)
Li linoleic acid (C18:2)
S stearic acid (C18:0)
MMM trimyristin
OOLi diolein-linolein
OOO triolein
Fig. 26. Energy requirements for the column operated isothermally at 60 C for PLIO palmitin-linolein
1 kmol/h of oil.
PPLI dipalmitin-linolein
PPP tripalmitin
PPS dipalmitin-stearin
are most benefic from health point of view but, for biodiesel POO palmitin-diolein
synthesis, they decrease the conversion and determine more POS palmitin-olein-stearin
energy consumption. Therefore, it would be recommended to PPO dipalmitin-olein
separate the unsaturated fats for human consumption and use Methyl-M methyl myristate
the saturated fats for biodiesel synthesis. The oils composed of C N:M FFA oil composition, where N is carbon chain length and
several triglycerides require larger reactive extraction column. In M is the number of double bonds, e.g. linolenic acid:
some cases, a too short column can be compensated using an C18:3.
excess of methanol. Therefore, a column with more stages would
be recommended for industrial application. However, it is ex- References
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Please cite this article in press as: Pleşu V, et al., Process intensification in biodiesel production with energy reduction by pinch analysis, Energy
(2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.energy.2014.11.013