Modelagem, simulação e avaliação técnico-econômica da rota etílica de produção de Biodiesel por destilação reativa a partir de óleos residuais

Abstract

Reactive separation processes have been extensively studied in recent years due continuous search for ways to reduce capital investments, operating costs, environmental impacts and energy waste. This continuous search reinforces the key phrase "produce more with less being sustainable", so that the intensification of processes has gained more attention in recent years. In this scenario, the reactive distillation column (RDC) has been applied to process development with greater technical and economic viability, increasing the performance of equilibrium reactions used in biodiesel production. The possibility of developing these processes has encouraged experimental studies and RDC simulation applied to esterification and transesterification equilibrium reactions. Bibliographic research showed that few studies have evaluated the possibility of producing biodiesel from raw materials with a high content of free fatty acids (FFAs), such as residual oils and fats (ROFs) in the presence of ethanol by RDC. As a result, this work aims to investigate the technical and economic feasibility of an alternative biodiesel production process using a RDC, in comparison to the conventional process composed of a reactor-separator unit. For this, the modeling and simulation of conventional and alternative processes of biodiesel production by the ethyl route in Aspen Plus software was developed to compare the technical and economic feasibility. Both processes met the specifications required by the National Agency of Petroleum, Natural Gas and Biofuels (ANP), regarding the minimum purity in esters and the maximum impurities. In addition, the alternative process has lower capital and utility costs compared to conventional process, with savings of US$ 800,000.00 in the implementation of the plant and US$ 307,829.00 per year in utilities. The alternative process also presented higher return on investment (ROI of 31.75%) and shorter period of return on investment (2.15 years), while the conventional process presented 27.21% and 2.42 years, respectively.