Alex H. West

TL;DR: Four continuous biodiesel processes were designed and simulated in HYSYS and the heterogeneous acid catalyst process had the lowest total capital investment and manufacturing costs, and had the only positive after tax rate of return.

TL;DR: In this paper, a promising catalyst based on a biomass pyrolysis byproduct, biochar, has been developed for the production of biodiesel two carbon-based solid acid catalysts were prepared by sulfonating pyrolyses char with concentrated or fuming sulfuric acids.

TL;DR: In this article, a commercial process simulator was used to develop a detailed simulation of a biodiesel production process, and carry out case studies and optimization, and found that the process is economically feasible, even without government subsidy, while at the same time the produced biodiesel met the required ASTM standard for purity.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors evaluated the effect of different types of catalysts on the performance of different kinds of processes and found that the heterogeneous and super-crane-based catalysts were the least convex and had the highest number of unit operat ions.