Energy indicators for microwave-assisted biodiesel production from waste fish oil

ABSTRACT

Biodiesel is produced from renewable sources such as vegetable oils and animal fats as a fuel for replacing fossil fuels in diesel engines. Energy efficiency and energy intensity in production processes are a significant issue. In this research work, the process energy indices and economic analysis have been investigated due to determine the potential advantages of using microwave energy for waste fish oil biodiesel production. A flow process including a magnetic stirrer and a microwave reactor has been used for transesterfication reaction. The equivalent of input and output energy of the biodiesel production process and the energy indices were obtained. According to the results, the total amount of input and output energy was 48.839 and 50.866 MJ.L⁻¹, respectively. The values of energy ratio, energy efficiency and energy intensity for producing one liter of biodiesel were calculated 1.0415, 0.0178 kg.MJ⁻¹ and 56.0724 MJ.kg⁻¹. Renewable and non-renewable energy values were obtained at 41.962 and 6.877 MJ.L⁻¹, respectively. Economic efficiency was also achieved at 1.6637 kg.$⁻¹. In other words, in this work, the price of produced biodiesel per gasoline-gallon equivalents (GGEs) will be 3.72 USD.

KEYWORDS:

• Productivity
• biodiesel
• waste fish oil
• microwave
• energy intensity
• energy ratio