HEAT EXCHANGE NETWORKS IN BIODIESEL PRODUCTION FROM WASTE COOKING OILS

Abstract

With the objective to aboard one of the challenges in Engineering teaching: It´s the application in professional practice?, along with attending to the actual requirements of achieve energetic efficiency in industrial process and to reuse wastes of food industry, this work, presents the application of heat exchange networks for the resolution of a real case: pre-treatment of waste cooking oils (WCO) withacid catalysis for biodiesel production. Different methods and software are applied to obtain the minimum amounts of heat and the heat exchange network for a processing capacity of 0,19 kg/s of WCO. A minimum temperature difference (Tmin) of 10°C is considered and the minimum requirements of heating and cooling result 4629,87 W and 10066,30 W, respectively. If this exchange network is not considered, this values increase to 26838,33 W and 21958,33 W, respectively. Applying heat exchange network, decrease 78,92% the required steam service in the process and water cooling service decreases 62,48%, demonstrating that integration reduces energetic requirements respect the non-integrated process.