Techno-Economic Study of a Biodiesel Production from Palm Fatty

Article pubs.acs.org/IECR

Techno-Economic Study of a Biodiesel Production from Palm Fatty Acid Distillate Hyun Jun Cho, Jin-Kuk Kim, Hyun-Jea Cho, and Yeong-Koo Yeo* Department of Chemical Engineering, Hanyang University, Haengdang-dong, Sungdong-gu, Seoul, Republic of Korea S Supporting Information *

ABSTRACT: Techno-economic analysis has been carried out for a single-step noncatalytic esterification process which produces biodiesel from palm fatty acid distillate (PFAD). A simulation model for this biodiesel production process has been developed, which provided the basis for the estimation of capital expenditure and operating cost. Although the process considered in this work has been observed as nonprofitable even at considerably large-plant capacity, the net cash flow becomes surplus at the capacity of 100 kt·y−1. Effects of raw material cost and biodiesel product price on the economic feasibility of the process have also been evaluated. With techno-economic analysis, it was found that the current biodiesel process would be economically viable with favorable changes in the economic parameters, i.e. $50·t−1 reduction for raw material purchase cost or $50·t−1 increase for biodiesel sales price.

1. INTRODUCTION Biodiesel, a renewable and sustainable substitute of the diesel fuel traditionally obtained from petroleum, is defined by the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) as monoalkyl esters of long-chain fatty acids derived from a renewable lipid feedstock such as vegetable oil or animal fats.1 In general, biodiesel, fatty acid methyl ester (FAME), is efficiently produced from the transesterification of vegetable oil or animal fats or from esterification of fatty acids with shortchain alcohols in the presence of homogeneous or heterogeneous alkali- and/or acid-based catalysts.2 Among catalytic processes,the alkali-catalyzed transesterification reaction is much faster than the acid-catalyzed transesterification and is popular in commercial production.3,4 However, alkali-catalyzed transesterification is suitable only for biodiesel production from feedstock containing low levels of free fatty acid (e.g., FFA < 1 wt %) such as refined vegetable oils. However, volatile and unpredictable price changes for refined vegetable oils is regarded as a main barrier for the further development of biodiesel industry, and it is not widely accepted in society as a sustainable and ethical way to utilize food feedstock for the production of fuels. Recently, heterogeneous acid catalysts have been more widely favored over homogeneous ones for adopting some lowquality feedstock which is unrefined and much cheaper than the refined oil, such as used cooking oils (2−7% FFA), animal fats (5−30%), palm fatty acid distillate (PFAD, 80−95%) and trap grease (100%).5−12 However, research on the direct use of a solid acid catalyst for biodiesel production has not been widely explored because of a slow reaction rate and a lack of knowledge in fundamental studies relating to reaction pathways of triglyceride on solid acids.13 There have been only a few studies on noncatalytic esterification and/or transesterification reactions which led to much simpler purification and environmentally friendly processes.14−20 Most of these studies were conducted under pressurized conditions, i.e., supercritical or subcritical con© XXXX American Chemical Society

ditions of methanol. However, the processes mentioned above are not easily applicable to the actual production of biodiesel due to the significantly high production and capital costs required. In addition, these processes are operated under severe operating conditions such as high pressure, high temperature, and high molar ratio of methanol, in which uncertain safety and potential hazard issues should be carefully managed. Therefore, significant efforts have been made in the academic and industrial community to develop the new biodiesel production process operating under nonsevere operating conditions with high economic potentials. Among these developments, a new method for biodiesel production from fatty acids, especially PFAD, has been proposed recently by Cho et al.21 As PFAD is the byproduct being inevitably generated in the purification process at the palm oil refinery, the price of PFAD is much cheaper than other refined oils which are major feed stocks for most of the current biodiesel plants. The process for the noncatalytic single-step esterification of PFAD proposed in the work is readily applicable to actual biodiesel production and can be one of the most competitive processes due to its simplicity, excellent reaction yield, and use of low-priced feedstock. Besides these technical aspects, economic feasibility is also of great importance to access process viability. A number of studies have been conducted to evaluate economics of various technologies available for biodiesel production in which a wide range of economic criteria have been employed and different design options and feedstocks have been considered. Several studies were conducted to analyze process economics of the alkali-catalyzed transesterification process based on refined or degummed vegetable oil, and it was concluded that biodiesel sale cost, profit gained from the sale of glycerol, and plant Received: June 21, 2012 Revised: September 27, 2012 Accepted: November 19, 2012

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dx.doi.org/10.1021/ie301651b | Ind. Eng. Chem. Res. XXXX, XXX, XXX−XXX

Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research

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Figure 1. AspenPlus model for biodiesel production by noncatalytic esterification of PFAD (Cho et al.21).

for realistic judgment in confidence for evaluating economic feasibility of the developed process. Economic evaluations described so far have been carried out on the basis of process modeling with the aid of a process simulator, for example, AspenPlus, HYSYS, or SuperPro Designer. Most of the studies conducted so far were based on a bare module concept,33 but Lee31 used Icarus Process Evaluator (IPE, AspenTech), which has been field tested for more than 30 years in commercial plants and is widely used by various engineering design firms. The advantage of using IPE is that it provides the necessary specifications for detailed design, estimation, and economic data. The detailed design allows detailed modifications of the process equipment, which is not possible in the Lang factor technique or the bare-module method.33 In addition, a more accurate estimation of a total capital investment can be achieved by the builtin database of the field-tested industrial standard design, as well as cost models used by project evaluators (Lee31). In the present study, an economic analysis has been performed for the single-step noncatalytic esterification method using PFAD proposed by Cho et al21 which is expected to be easily commercialized as an attractive alternative process to the conventional biodiesel production due to the usage of cheap raw material. The process model has been developed by using AspenPlus. The proposed model provides heat and material balances from which evaluation of the manufacturing cost was conducted. IPE has been used to obtain the detailed capital cost. In this study, much effort was focused to identify the key economic parameters in the estimation of capital and manufacturing costs and to understand their characteristics and impacts on the costs of the plant when processing capacity is varied. Net present value (NPV) and payback period (PBP) are evaluated at various values of raw material and product sale costs to provide economic insights into the process considered in the present study.

capacity are key parameters for profitability of the process, and their impacts related to the change of these parameters on the overall economics have been forecasted.23−25 On the other hand, some investigations had been made to utilize relatively cheap waste or used cooking oil, rather than expensive, refined vegetable oil, as the usage of used or waste cooking oil is limited in the alkali-transesterification process due to high concentration of free fatty acid in the feedstock. Also the manufacturing cost for these processes based on used or waste cooking oil had been evaluated, which was then compared with that of the alkali-catalyzed transesterification process.1,26,27 From the studies presented above, biodiesel production using heterogeneous acid catalysis seems to be the most promising technology. Other considerations were made to the development of biodiesel production from low-cost feedstock at supercritical or subcritical conditions of methanol, and its economic performance was evaluated and compared with that of the alkalitransesterification process.28−31 A few studies among them concluded that, while the supercritical process requires considerable capital investment, it is economically advantageous, compared to the alkali-transesterification process.29−31 Recently, key economic factors of the noncatalytic esterification of PFAD, compared to other production methods, have been studied (Cho et al.32), as the process considered in the work is cost-effective at the 8 kt·y−1 capacity of biodiesel product, because about 25% of manufacturing cost for the process considered is cheaper than the supercritical process and the transesterification process. Cho et al.32 concluded that quick economic return for the current process is possible, as relative payback time is less than 0.33 year, although the proposed process requires about 21% more capital investment, compared to the transesterification process. However, processing capacity studied was too small to justify economic viability of the proposed process for industrial-scale applications, which was one of main drawbacks of the previous economic costing studies. And the study by Cho et al.32 was not able to explore the detailed economic costing with rigorous equipment sizing

2. METHODOLOGY 2.1. Modeling. To assess the technological feasibility and to obtain material and energy balances for a preliminary economic B



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where CFA is concentration of fatty acid (oleic acid) and the frequency factor, A, and the activation energy, Ea, are 2.12 min−1 and 17.74 kJ/mol, respectively. The reboiler (HEATER2) is employed to provide the heat required for endothermic reaction. The top vapor product from the reactor includes unreacted methanol, water produced from the reaction and part of FAME component. FAME is recovered from the column (REC-COL) and returned to the reactor, while the light components (i.e., methanol and water) are further processed in the column to recover methanol. Five theoretical stages are taken for REC-COL (‘RadFrac’). FAME-rich bottom liquid product from the reactor is purified in the distillation column (BDCOL). The ‘RadFrac’ column simulation module is applied for the rigorous simulation of MEOH-COL, under atmospheric pressure and with 20 theoretical stages. The reflux ratio is adjusted to meet the required purity of methanol which is pure enough to be recycled to the reactor. The bottom product from MEOH-COL, mainly water, is discharged as wastewater. Also, the ‘RadFrac’ is employed to simulate the distillation column (BDCOL) which purifies crude FAME bottom product from the reactor. Due to the high boiling point of FAME, the column is operated at a very low operating pressure, less than 1.5 kPa, and 20 theoretical stages are used. The reflux ratio is adjusted to satisfy the specification of biodiesel set by the European Standard EN14105. The final product is obtained from the top distillate stream of the column, and residue (most of which consists of triglyceride) is discharged from the bottom of the column. Stream information of feed and product flows and energy requirements of unit operations for the biodiesel production process based on the noncatalytic esterification are given in Tables S1 and S2 of the Supporting Information, respectively. 2.2. Economic Analysis. In the present study, economic analysis refers to the evaluation of capital cost and manufacturing cost for the process, and the sensitivity analysis on the profitability of the process based on nondiscounted criteria, payback period (PBP), and a discounted criteria, net present value (NPV) according to changes in feed and product prices. Basically, estimation of the capital cost for the biodiesel production by noncatalytic esterification was performed by mapping modeling results from AspenPlus into IPE and relating each unit in simulation to a specific type of process equipment. Purchase cost of various equipment, CEQ, including towers, heat exchangers, vessels, pumps, etc., was determined from the default method of IPE, which allows sizing and costing of unit operations. No prototype for the counter-current type reactor is available within IPE, and therefore, the cost of a counter-current reactor was estimated from the column with bubble cap tray. The size of the column was taken as being equivalent to 3-h residence time. Table S3 of the Supporting Information shows size and specification for the major equipment, including towers and heat exchangers when the processing capacity is 120 kt·y−1 of biodiesel product. It should be noted that unit height per theoretical stage of column is different according to the type of column. For example, MEOHCOL is valve tray type, while BDCOL is packing type. Therefore, the height of BDCOL and MEOHCOL is different although the numbers of theoretical stages for both columns are the same. CBM, cost for bulk materials, including piping, steel structure, electrical, instrumentation, insulation etc. and CID, indirect cost for engineering and construction indirect cost for engineering and construction were also estimated from IPE.

analysis, complete process modeling of the biodiesel process adopting noncatalytic esterification of PFAD (Cho et al.21) was performed. Despite some expected differences between the process model and actual operation, process simulators are commonly used to provide reliable information on a process operation owing to their vast component libraries, comprehensive thermodynamic packages, and advanced computational methods. In this work, AspenPlus (ASPEN Tech, Inc.) was used to conduct the modeling. The first step in developing the process model was selecting the chemical components for the process, as well as related thermodynamic models. Additionally, unit operations and operating conditions and input conditions must all be selected and specified. AspenPlus library includes a physical property database for the following components used in the modeling: methanol, water, oleic acid, methyl oleate, and triolein. PFAD was simply represented by the mixture of triolein (11.7%), oleic acid (87.3%), and water (1.0%), based on the composition of PFAD in the experimental work of Cho et al..21 Accordingly, methyl-oleate, also available in the AspenPlus component library, was taken as the product of the esterification reaction. A considerable difference was observed between the value of the vapor pressure of triolein from the physical property library of AspenPlus and that of triolein estimated from experiments. Therefore, the equation for the calculation of vapor pressure of triolein provided by Appostolakou et al.24 was adopted in the present study. Owing to the presence of polar compounds such as methanol and water in the process, the Wilson thermodynamic/activity model with the Redlich−Kwong equation of state was selected for use as the property package in the modeling. Since some binary interaction parameters for vapor−liquid equilibrium were not available in the software databanks, they were estimated using the UNIFAC group method in AspenPlus. Figure 1 shows the flowsheet for a biodiesel production process which is composed of a noncatalytic esterification of PFAD, fatty acid methyl ester(FAME) recovery (distillation), product purification (distillation) and methanol recovery (distillation) using AspenPlus. PFAD (FEED-P1, -P2, -P3) and methanol (FEED-M1, -M2, -M3, -M4) were used as raw materials. PFAD was pumped up to overpass the reaction pressure using a pump (PUMP1) and preheated to the reaction temperature through a heat exchanger (HEATER1). Recovered unreacted methanol was mixed with fresh methanol at MIXER1, which was evaporated (EVAPORAT) and transferred back to the reactor. The modeling of a reactor is based on the reaction condition in the experiment of Cho et al.21 (290 °C, 0.85 MPa, methanol to feed molar ratio 4.8), and the continuous reactor employed takes liquid PFAD (FEED-P2) feed from the upper part of the reactor, which is countercurrently in contact with vapor methanol (FEED-M4) supplied from the lower part of the reactor. The RadFrac simulation module available in AspenPlus was used to model and simulate reactive distillation, by assuming 10 stages and 3 h of reaction duration for the column and using kinetic parameters for a noncatalytic esterification of PFAD verified from the experimental study of Cho et al.21,22 as shown in eqs 1 and 2, −

dC FA = k f′C FA dt

k f′ = A e−Ea / RT

(1) (2) C



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Table 1. Total Capital Cost for the Biodiesel Process Considered in the Present Study plant capacity (kt·y−1) (MM$)

20

40

60

80

100

120

equipment, CEQ bulk material, CBM direct cost, CD= CEQ + CBM indirect cost, CID IBL cost, CIBL = CD + CID auxiliary facility cost, CAUX = 0.5CIBL fixed capital cost, CFC = CIBL + CAUX working capital cost, CWC = 0.15CFC total capital cost, CTC = CFC + CWC

1.64 1.96 3.60 4.42 8.02 4.01 12.03 1.80 13.83

2.66 2.22 4.88 4.97 9.84 4.92 14.77 2.21 16.98

3.47 2.47 5.94 5.36 11.29 5.65 16.94 2.54 19.48

4.37 2.40 6.77 5.33 12.10 6.05 18.15 2.72 20.87

5.57 2.55 8.12 5.65 13.78 6.89 20.66 3.10 23.76

6.35 2.68 9.03 5.90 14.93 7.47 22.40 3.36 25.76

IPE does not have a functionality to estimate CAUX, cost incurred for site development, auxiliary buildings and off-sites and utilities, including storage tanks, utility systems, central environmental control facilities and fire protecting systems. It is difficult to perform accurate costing for CAUX as it is strongly dependent on the location and characteristics of the plant. In this study, CAUX is taken as 50% of CIBL33 which is overall cost required for the plant within inside battery limit and is given by sum of CEQ, CBM, and CID. Working capital cost, CWC, is usually a fraction of the fixed capital cost, CFC(=CIBL + CAUX), and 15% of CFC is taken by previous works.25,26,30,34 In the present work, the total manufacturing cost was estimated from the heat and mass balances, prices of raw material, chemicals, and utilities as well as operating labor cost. As mentioned earlier by some researchers,1,23−26,30 total manufacturing cost and profit are heavily influenced by raw material cost and product cost. To reflect actual market trend in this study, prices for raw material and product are averaged over the past five years between 2007 and 2011 (Table S4 of the Supporting Information) to be used in the economic analysis. Other prices for chemicals and utilities used in the process are also shown in Table S4. Cost of operating labor, COL, was estimated from the correlation by Alkhayat and Gerrard35 and the method described in Turton et al.33 Depreciation cost was calculated using a straight-line method over 9.5 years with no salvage value.33 All the other individual items of manufacturing cost were estimated by the method presented in Turton et al.33 based on fixed capital cost, CFC, and cost of operating labor, COL; the federal tax rate33 was applied to compute ‘Profit after Tax’, PAT. To assess the profitability of the process in the present study, two economic indicators, payback period (PBP) and net present value (NPV), were calculated from the total capital cost and the total manufacturing cost. Payback period, PBP is defined as eq 3. PBP =

fixed capital cost (C FC) profit after tax (PAT) + depreciation (CDP)

capital cost decreases with plant capacity. This pattern agrees well with typical trends observed in chemical industries. These results are plotted in Figure 2, which shows the relative

Figure 2. Ratios of equipment cost, bulk material cost, direct cost, and indirect cost to total fixed capital cost.

contribution of each cost item to the overall capital cost. The direct cost becomes dominant in the overall capital cost when the plant capacity increases. For example, when the capacity is 120 kt·y−1, direct cost contributes more than 40% of capital cost. Table 2 shows details of manufacturing cost and values of PBP and NPV for different plant capacities for the biodiesel production process by noncatalytic esterification. Changes of the ratio of individual cost item with plant capacity are shown in Figure 3. Although the noncatalytic esterification process considered in this work is based on the utilization of cheap raw material, the cost of which is 20−30% cheaper than feedstock used in other conventional processes, the dominant cost item in the manufacturing cost is related to the purchase of PFAD, which keeps increasing and reaches around 66% of overall manufacturing cost. With prices of raw materials ($608·t−1) and product ($1005·t −1 ) chosen for this study, it is not economically viable to produce biodiesel. This strongly indicates that considerable governmental support (such as tax benefits) is needed for the commercial implementation of the proposed process. Meanwhile, the effect of “economy of scale” can be observed from Table 2 and Figure 3. As the plant capacity increases, the deficit decreases, and better cash flow is achieved. Negative cash flow switches to surplus at more than 100 kt·y−1 capacity. It should be noted that the selling price of biodiesel is not steady over time because the price of biodiesel in the market is significantly dependent on that of petro-diesel produced from petroleum-based refineries, and the price of raw material for the biodiesel production, PFAD in the current work, is highly

(3)

Discount rate and project life for evaluation of NPV, used in this work, is 10% and 10 years, respectively.

3. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION Overall capital cost of the plant with each cost item is tabulated in Table 1 when plant capacity is varied for the biodiesel production process by noncatalytic esterification. The ratio of direct cost, CD, representing the purchasing cost of equipment and bulk materials, to total fixed capital cost increases with plant capacity, while the ratio of indirect cost, CID, to total fixed D



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Table 2. Estimated Total Manufacturing Cost and Profitability plant capacity (kt·y−1) cost items (MM$) Direct Cost Raw Material PFAD methanol Utility and Waste treatment steam and fuel electricity cooling water waste disposal Labor oprating labor, COL supervisory and clerical labor, 0.18COL Miscellaneous maintenance and repair, 0.06CFC operating supplies, 0.009CFC lab charges, 0.15COL patents and royalties, 0.03CMF Fixed Cost depreciation, CDP local taxes and insurance, 0.032CFC plant overhead, 0.708COL + 0.036CFC General Expenses admin. costs, 0.177COL + 0.009CFC dist. and selling cost, 0.11CMF res. and dev., 0.05CMF Total Manufacturing Cost, CMF Revenue Profit before Tax, PBT income tax Profit after Tax, PAT After-Tax Cash Flow, CFAT = PAT + CDP PBP (payback period, y), CFC / CFAT NPV (net present value)

20

40

60

80

100

120

13.33 0.95

26.67 1.89

40.00 2.84

53.33 3.78

66.67 4.73

80.00 5.67

0.67 0.0012 0.08 0.10

1.34 0.0025 0.16 0.19

2.00 0.0037 0.24 0.29

2.67 0.0050 0.31 0.39

3.34 0.0062 0.39 0.48

4.01 0.0074 0.47 0.58

0.74 0.13

0.74 0.13

0.74 0.13

0.74 0.13

0.74 0.13

0.74 0.13

0.72 0.11 0.11 0.73

0.89 0.13 0.11 1.32

1.02 0.15 0.11 1.90

1.09 0.16 0.11 2.47

1.24 0.19 0.11 3.05

1.34 0.20 0.11 3.63

1.27 0.38 0.96

1.55 0.47 1.06

1.78 0.54 1.13

1.91 0.58 1.18

2.18 0.66 1.27

2.36 0.72 1.33

0.24 2.69 1.22 24.43 20.10 −4.33 0.00 −4.33 −3.06 − −32.64

0.26 4.83 2.20 43.95 40.20 −3.75 0.00 −3.75 −2.19 − −30.45

0.28 6.96 3.16 63.29 60.30 −2.99 0.00 −2.99 −1.21 − −26.90

0.29 9.06 4.12 82.34 80.40 −1.94 0.00 −1.94 −0.03 − −21.04

0.32 11.20 5.09 101.79 100.50 −1.29 0.00 −1.29 0.89 23.29 −18.31

0.33 13.31 6.05 121.00 120.60 −0.40 0.00 −0.40 1.96 11.42 −13.71

Figure 3. Ratios of direct cost, fixed cost, general expenses, and feedstock cost to total manufacturing cost.

Figure 4. Yearly changes in the price difference of PFAD and PBD and their impact on the profitability of the biodiesel process for 120 kt·y−1 plant.

fluctuating according to the productivity of crop and demand in the market. Care must be taken to interpret the outcome of economic analysis carried out in this work, as uncertainties in the prices of raw material and biodiesel product definitely affect the calculation of manufacturing cost and profit. By taking into account the fluctuating nature of prices of palm biodiesel, PBD, and PFAD over the past five years (2007−2011), profit before tax, PBT, was calculated for the biodiesel process with a capacity of 120 kt·y−1. As shown in Figure 4, surplus occurred for the years 2008 and 2011, while deficits were observed for the years 2007, 2009, and 2010. Especially, the trend of the change in

profit before tax, PBT, is similar to that of price difference between PBD and PFAD, which implies that this price difference is the dominant factor for the profitability of the process. On the other hand, it has been analyzed how the prices of raw material and biodiesel product influence overall economics of the processes considered in this work. Two factors, price of PFAD and biodiesel product, with five different levels per each factor were investigated in the sensitivity analysis for the process of 120 kt·y−1 capacity, as given in Table 3. The results E



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Table 3. Description of Factors in Sensitivity Analysis level factor X1 X2

description price of PFAD ($/t) palm biodiesel price ($/t)

−100

−50

0

50

100

508 905

558 955

608 1005

658 1055

708 1105

of the sensitivity analysis are shown in Figures 5 and 6, which exhibit the changes of payback period, PBP, and net present

Figure 6. Impact of feedstock price (a), and product price (b) on the net present value (NPV) for 120 kt·y−1 plant.

the process utilizes PFAD which is around 20−30% cheaper than refined vegetable oil used in conventional biodiesel production process. The detailed economic costing and evaluation have been made from mass and energy balances obtained from modeling and simulation of the process flowsheet. For the capital cost of the present process, the portion of direct cost increases according to the plant capacity as in the case of typical chemical processes. The purchasing cost for the raw material, PFAD, is the largest contributor to manufacturing cost, and it was found that about 66% of the manufacturing cost consists of the raw material cost when the plant capacity is 120 kt·y−1. The effect of “economy of scale” for the proposed process has been observed, and positive net cash flow was obtained for a capacity larger than 100 kt·y−1. Sensitivity of the two most influential factors on the profitability of the process, namely the purchase cost of PFAD and the selling price of palm biodiesel, has been examined, and a small favorable change of either of these two factors, for example, $50·t−1 increase in the palm biodiesel selling price or $50·t−1 decrease in PFAD price, enables turning the profit from deficit to surplus. This result supports the significance of the competitiveness of the proposed process in the market, as the production of biodiesel from PFAD is economically viable without relying on governmental support or tax benefits even under the current market trend of considerable increases in the price of raw material. Also, if cheaper feed than PFAD could be utilized in the proposed process, it is expected that its profitability could be further improved, and industrial uptake could be significantly increased.

Figure 5. Impact of feedstock price (a), and product price (b) on the payback period (PBP) for 120 kt·y−1 plant.

value, NPV, respectively, according to the changes of two factors. With $50·t−1 reduction for the price of PFAD, X1, or $50·t−1 increase for the price of palm biodiesel, X2, payback period is significantly improved from more than 11 years to less than 2 years. The same trend is observed in Figure 6 in which net cash flow becomes positive with $50·t−1 of favorable change in X1 or X2. Meanwhile, the degree of negative effect caused by an unfavorable change of X1 or X2 is more severe than that of positive effect caused by a favorable change of X1 or X2, which can be seen by comparing the slope of NPV profiles in Figure 6 (|a′| > |a|, b′ > b).

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ASSOCIATED CONTENT

S Supporting Information *

4. CONCLUSION Techno-economic evaluation as well as sensitivity analysis of key economic parameters for the single-step noncatalytic esterification method proposed by Cho et al.21 was performed. The process considered in this work showed promising potential for further development and commercialization as

Tables on feed and product stream information for the noncatalytic esterification process, energy requirements for each unit process, summary of size and specification for major equipment, and prices of raw materials, chemicals, utilities, and products. This material is available free of charge via the Internet at http://pubs.acs.org. F



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AUTHOR INFORMATION

Corresponding Author

*Telephone: +82 2 2220 0488. Fax: +82 2 2220 4007. E-mail: [email protected]. Notes

The authors declare no competing financial interest.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This work was supported by Korea Research Foundation Grant funded by the Korean Government (2010-0007152) and in part by the Ministry of Knowledge Economy, Republic of Korea, as a part of the research project titled “Constitution of Energy Network Using District Heating Energy” (Project No: 2007-E-ID25-P-02-0-000). We thank them for their support.

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Techno-Economic Study of a Biodiesel Production from Palm Fatty

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