Design of Biodiesel Reactor Heated by Steam from Jatropha Cake Boiler
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Date
2019-06
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Since in the last century, fossil fuel resources are being depleted at alarming rate due to rapid
industrialization. Combustion of large quantity of fuel resulted in emission of pollutant and
Carbon dioxide and caused greenhouse effect that caused global warming. The remedy of
global warming is to substitute fossil fuels by renewable energy. Among the renewable
energy sources, biodiesel is a fuel that can substitute diesel fuel. Biodiesel is produced by
transesterifiction of plant oils. Jatropha is one source of biodiesel which is non-edible by
human being and animals. Instead of using edible vegetable oils, use of jatropha oil does not
endanger food security.
The generation of biodiesels needs reactors in which the chemical reaction or
transesterifiction takes place. When biodiesel is produced from jatropha seed during oil
extraction, jatropha cake is obtained as byproduct. The main objective of this thesis is to
design appropriate reactor for Biodiesel which is heated by steam from jatropha cake boiler
so that the process will be self-sufficient in thermal energy use. The design of jacketed
reactor is done by analytical and computational methods through Ansys fluent release 17.2
to assure proper mixing and uniform reaction temperature is achieved. The steam jacket
around the reactor is insulated to reduce heat losses.
The jacketed reactor is designed for steam annular area as heat exchanger without fluid
contact. The temperature of the jatropha oil is raised from 30 to 80 degree Celsius by
transferring of heat energy from steam boiler which is the maximum temperature. This heat
is required to reduce the retention time of jatropha oil during reaction with ethanol oil to
produce biodiesel. No heat loss is happened at the conical shape of the reactor and heat is
transferred from the wall of the reactor to the batch fluid to raise the temperature of the batch
fluid from 303 to 353K for 500s heating process by using 412.16kJ capacity of jatropha cake
boiler which is used 75 kg of jatropha cake. From this capacity of boiler, 269.81kJ heat
energy is transferred by convection and conduction heat transfer system to heat 75kg of
batch reactant in the reactor .The heating time of jatropha oil through convection heat
transfer through reactor is 500s
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Keywords
Biodiesel, Jatropha, Batch reactor, Jacketed Heat transfer