Operation and Control of Enzymatic Biodiesel Production

Jason A. Price, Jakob Kjbsted Huusom, Mathias Nordblad, John Woodley Department of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering,Technical University of Denmark, DK-2800 Kgs Lyngby, Denmark; (e-mail: {japr,jkh,matn,jw } @ kt.dtu.dk)

Introduction
The production of fuel-grade biodiesel using enzymes can be as simple as :

Enzymatic biodiesel production

Future work
Evaluation of current kinetic model This is essential for the development of the steady-state/ dynamic simulations and proper fitting of the experimental data. Identification of critical process parameters The aim is to identify which process variables the system is sensitive to by identifying the input variables to the system and the responses that are to be measured for batch and continuous operation. Scale up and economic evaluation Scale up and an economic evaluation of the proposed continuous process is developed along with a sensitivity analysis of the economic evaluation. The proposed strategies will be validated experimentally on the departments pilot facilities seen in Figure 4.

Figure 1 : Ideal process design for enzymatic BD. (A) Reactor; (B) Separation (centrifuge or decanter); (C) Filter [1]

The characteristics of feedstock however are very important and the fuel properties mainly depend on the feedstock properties [2]. Accordingly, the analysis of biodiesel and monitoring of the transesterification reaction is also important to successfully commercialize biodiesel, as a high quality fuel with no operational problems.

Reaction mechanism
Instead of using conventional alkali or acid catalyst to produce biodiesel, lipases are used. The lipase catalyzed reaction can be classified as hydrolysis, esterification and transesterification and is illustrated below.
Figure 3 : Pros vs. Cons of producing biodiesel enzymatically compared to conventional Acid/Base catalyst

Motivation for control

Most of the cons presented can be mitigated by an efficient control strategy, providing energy savings and at the same time produce a more consistent product quality. Improved operation can be achieved from: Implementation of a control system to handle changes in the feed composition Correct dosing of alcohol can lead to higher yields and prevent deactivation of the enzyme

Process monitoring challenges

Currently high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) is the analytical technique employed in our department to monitor the transesterification reaction. However, these techniques demand significant time and is not easily adapted for on-line monitoring.

Figure 4 : 20 L Batch stirred reactor for biodiesel production at DTU

References
Spectroscopic techniques (e.g. near infrared (NIR) spectroscopy) appear to be more suitable, considering that they are fast and more easily adaptable for in situ applications. However, NIR is a secondary method, thus the primary method (HPLC) will be required to create values for the NIR spectra that is used to correlate.
Figure 2 : Lipase catalyzed reactions

Procedures based on physical properties such as viscosity are also available but are more suited to identifying the end point of the reaction. Still also a secondary method.

[1] L Fjerbaek, KV Christensen, B Norddahl. A review of the current state of biodiesel production using enzymatic transesterification, Biotechnol.Bioeng. 102 (2009) 1298-1315. [2] S Al-Zuhair, A Almenhali, I Hamad, M Alshehhi, N Alsuwaidi, S Mohamed. Enzymatic production of biodiesel from used/waste vegetable oils: Design of a pilot plant, Renewable Energy. 36 (2011) 2605-2614.