Abstract

CARLOS HERNANDEZ, Salvador  and  DIAZ JIMENEZ, María de Lourdes Virginia. ANALYSIS OF AN INDUSTRIAL BIODIESEL PRODUCTION PROCESS BY LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENT. Rev. Int. Contam. Ambient [online]. 2018, vol.34, n.3, pp.453-465. ISSN 0188-4999.  https://doi.org/10.20937/rica.2018.34.03.08.

This document focuses on a life cycle assessment of a biodiesel production process from vegetal waste fats. The goal was to evaluate the environmental performance of the process and to identify opportunities to improve it. Those wastes are originated by the restaurant industry on the urban zone of Tijuana, Mexico and they are processed by Enremex S. de R. L. de C. V. A transesterification reaction with homogeneous catalyst is used to produce 1 200 000 L of biodiesel and around 240 000 L of glycerol per year. As an alternative to the homogeneous catalyst, a based natural zeolite heterogeneous catalyst is proposed. Then, a series of laboratory experiments were performed. Concerning the environmental assessment, the biodiesel production process was separated in three steps: a) raw material collection, b) biodiesel production, and c) wastes management. In addition, two scenarios were considered: 1) transesterification with homogeneous catalyst, 2) transesterification with heterogeneous catalyst. The results show that the production stage is the one that contributes the most on the environmental impact. Also, the use of a heterogeneous catalyst reduces the environmental impact in comparison with the homogeneous one.

Keywords : environmental impact; biofuel; waste fat.