DESIGN OF A MOBILE BIO DIESEL PRODUCTION
PLANT
Department: Engineering – Chemical Engineering
Executive Summary
The main goal of this
project is to design a mobile biodiesel production plant, which is
capable of producing 3000
L of biodiesel per week. The design constraints specify that
the biodiesel production
plant must be sized to fit into a standard truck-trailer with
dimensions 8 feet wide by
40 feet long by 9.5 feet tall. The plant is to be self-sufficient in
one form of energy
(provided by the client), adaptable to different grades of waste
vegetable oil (WVO),
environmentally friendly, and economically feasible.
This report presents the
final design of the mobile plant in two-dimensional Process Flow
Diagrams (PFD’s) and
three-dimensional AutoCAD renderings. The main reaction, the
pre-treatment, and the
purification stages are described in detail and the proposed
process, including
equipment design specifications, is introduced. The feasibility of this
design was evaluated
through an environmental impact assessment and economic
analysis. Although the
contents of wastewater are unsuitable for discharge, the economic
analysis, including
wastewater disposal costs, proves the design to be economically
feasible. With the
production rate of 156,000 L biodiesel annually, a profit of $20563
each year is realized.
For the continuation of
this project, future groups are encouraged to collect data specific
to biodiesel and determine the demand for a such a mobile
plant.
1.0 Introduction
The purpose of this
project is to design an economically feasible mobile biodiesel plant
capable of processing
different grades of waste vegetable oil (WVO) to produce 3000 L
of biodiesel per week. The
mobile biodiesel production unit will travel to locations such
as cruise ship ports and
small communities, where the clients are participating in the
Biodiesel~In Motion program. The clients are
provided with two tanks, one for WVO
collection and storage and
the other for the biodiesel product. It is desired that the mobile
plant operate to meet the
production requirements of 3000 L of biodiesel per week at the
end of a 40-hour work
week, such that the plant requires two full-time operators. The
biodiesel produced can
then be sold back to the client to fuel their diesel-engined
machinery. In addition,
the only client requirements are that they must provide electrical
energy, water, and steam
for the mobile plant process.
This final report details
the plans and decisions that were made leading up to the
completion of the design
of the mobile plant. Section 2.0 will present the main reaction
that was chosen to convert
WVO to biodiesel, including the rationale and consequences
for this choice. The
process which takes WVO through pre-treatment, reaction, and
finally, purification is
described in Section 3.0 and illustrated in Process Flow Diagrams
and Piping and
Instrumentation Diagrams attached in Appendix B. The equipment that
this process requires is
sized and shown in Section 4.0. Section 5.0 discusses the
environmental impacts of
this mobile plant. Finally, based on equipment cost estimates,
the feasibility of this
mobile plant is evaluated in an economic analysis in Section 6.0.
Finally, recommendations have been proposed for the
continuation of this project.