(Japanese Source)

Abstract

As sustainable development has become desirable in all process industries, biomass has attracted attention as a carbon-neutral energy source with a small environmental impact. The most common form of biomass energy in today's society is biodiesel fuel (BDF). BDF is made not only from virgin vegetable oil but also waste edible oil, which is troublesome to dispose of. BDF is also environmentally preferable to diesel fuel because of its lower discharge of sulfur oxides. Because of these merits, more widespread use of BDF is desirable. In Japan, several types of equipment for BDF production have been developed, and local governments, schools, nursing home and companies have purchased them to make BDF for use in their buses, trucks and official vehicles. However, the fact that these devices are not optimized based on mixing technology, not easy to operate and expensive has been a barrier to their more widespread adoption. In this work, experiments were conducted to develop equipment with higher performance in production of BDF than that on the market. The results showed that a rectangular vessel is more effective than the cylindrical one commonly used, allowing a marked decrease in mixing time, a reduction in equipment size and, thus, a re-duction in equipment price. Based on these findings, novel equipment to produce BDF has been developed and placed on the market. © 2011 The Society of Chemical Engineers, Japan.