Exergy analysis applied to biodiesel production

Laura Talens, Gara Villalba and Xavier Gabarrell

Resources, Conservation & Recycling, 2007, vol. 51, issue 2, 397-407

Abstract: In our aim to decrease the consumption of materials and energy and promote the use of renewable resources, such as biofuels, rises the need to measure materials and energy fluxes. This paper suggests the use of Exergy Flow Analysis (ExFA) as an environmental assessment tool to account wastes and emissions, determine the exergetic efficiency, compare substitutes and other types of energy sources: all useful in defining environmental and economical policies for resource use. In order to illustrate how ExFA is used, it is applied to the process of biodiesel production. The results show that the production process has a low exergy loss (492MJ). The exergy loss is reduced by using potassium hydroxide and sulphuric acid as process catalysts and it can be further minimised by improving the quality of the used cooking oil.

Keywords: Exergy analysis; Exergetic efficiency; Environmental assessment; Renewable resources; Biodiesel (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (27)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921344906002473
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:recore:v:51:y:2007:i:2:p:397-407

DOI: 10.1016/j.resconrec.2006.10.008

Access Statistics for this article

Resources, Conservation & Recycling is currently edited by Ming Xu

More articles in Resources, Conservation & Recycling from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kai Meng ().