Optimization of Production and Performance of Biodiesel through Optimization Techniques: A Review

Biodiesel is recently gaining importance as a substitute for petroleum based diesel mainly due to environmental considerations and depletion of vital resources like petroleum and coal. According to Indian petro fuel consumption scenario, the demand for petroleum diesel is increasing day by day hence there is a need to find out an appropriate solution may be biodiesel but the cost of biodiesel produced from vegetable oil through transesterification is higher than fossil fuel, because of high raw material cost. To minimize the biodiesel cost, in recent days, in most cases, NaOH is used as alkaline catalyst, because of its low cost and higher reaction rate. In this review the important process variables for esterification such as concentration of acid catalyst, alcohol/oil ratio, reaction time, temperature, and % of excess alcohol are optimized. The results are also verified with Ganetic Algoritham (GA) method and Taguchi method. Also summarized the research works in optimization of C. I. engineperformance and operating parameters for biodiesel fuel using optimization techniques.