Techno-economic Analysis for Production of Biodiesel from Microalgae using Aspen Plus

Dobhal, Nitesh (2016) Techno-economic Analysis for Production of Biodiesel from Microalgae using Aspen Plus. Masters thesis, Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad.

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Abstract

Techno-economic analysis is extremely important to demonstrate suitability of a process for potential forthcoming commercial developments. Microalgae has huge potential for the production of biodiesel suitable for application as transportation fuel thereby mitigating emission of harmful and greenhouse gases. The present work provides conceptual process design and economic feasibility analysis for microalgae cultivation and extraction of oil and conversion of microalgal oil into biodiesel using Aspen plus. In the present work, the nannochloropsis salina was considered as microalgae species with chemical formula of C50H50O30N7. The microalgae were cultivated in a tubular photo bioreactor.. In the present work, microalgal oil was considered as a mixture of triglycerides containing three same fatty acid groups in the structure. The physicochemical properties of these triglycerides and microalgae were included in Aspen Plus to regress the property methods. The regressed property method was then used for techno-economic analysis for various plant capacities. The unitary production cost of biodiesel decreased slightly with increasing plant capacity. 0.125 MMT microalgal oil/annum was considered as the optimum plant capacity. The chemicals alone contribute about 40% of unitary production cost of microalgal oil. On the other hand, the microalgal oil was the largest cost contributing factor in the production of biodiesel with share of up to 65% of unitary production cost of biodiesel. The unitary production cost of microalgal oil and biodiesel was found to be 0.79 $/Kg and 1.15 $/Kg respectively. Therefore, the biodiesel produced from microalgae is competitive with today’s petrodiesel.

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