European Journal of Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Sciences

MODELING, SIMULATION AND OPTIMIZATION OF TRANSESTERIFICATION OF CITRULLUS LANATUS OIL TO BIODIESEL USING ASPEN PLUS SOFTWARE

Dauda Baba*, Abdullateef Baba, Mustapha Hussaini and Olufunmi O. Ayodeji

ABSTRACT

Biodiesel is one of the renewable energy resources which is suitable to replace the fossil fuel due to the depletion of fossil fuel in the future. The modeling and optimization of biodiesel production process from citrullus-lanatus oil is conducted by using Aspen-plus software version 8.8. This process is modeled and simulated in order to optimize the biodiesel production with significant parameters that affect the biodiesel production process. The sensitivity analyses and the optimization of the process were accomplished using the Sensitivity and the Optimization sections of Model Analysis Tool of Aspen Plus. The results obtained revealed that; with increase in temperature biodiesel yield increases at first and started falling at 64.5oC. An increase in resident time gives rise to increase in biodiesel yield, at 2hr 30min the increases in the yield becomes slower. Increase in Catalyst concentration and methanol-oil ratio give rise to a decrease in biodiesel yield. The sensitivity analyses of the process carried out shows that optimization was necessary to obtain the operating variables that would yield maximum biodiesel flow. The result of the optimization indicated increase in biodiesel flow from 9.04 to of 9.8kmol/hr, Temperature from 50 to 58oC, Methanol-Oil ratio increases from 3 to 4.5, the time of reaction increases from 30 to 90 min while catalyst-concentration decreases from 0.0852 to 0.0853. The model developed gives an optimum values of methanol-oil ratio, catalyst concentration and reaction temperature which can be successfully adopted in oil industry to maximize the yield of methyl esters.

Keywords: Transesterification, Aspen Plus, Sensitivity Analysis, Optimization, Biodiesel.