Plantwide Control of Biodiesel Production from Waste Cooking Oil Using Integrated Framework of Simulation and Heuristics

This article describes the systematic plantwide control (PWC) design of an ecofriendly process for biodiesel production from waste cooking oil (WCO) feedstock A simulation model was developed to produce biodiesel from WCO that reduces both production costs and adverse environmental impacts. An effective PWC system is crucial for the safe, smooth, and economical operation of a biodiesel plant. Hence, a PWC system was developed for a homogeneously catalyzed biodiesel process using the integrated framework of simulation and heuristics (IFSH). The main merits of the IFSH methodology are effective use of rigorous process simulators and heuristics in developing a PWC system and simplicity of application. Finally, the performance of the developed control system was assessed in terms of settling time, a dynamic economic index based on the deviation from the production target (DPT), and the overall total variation (TV) in manipulated variables. These performance assessments and the results of dynamic simulations showed that the developed PWC system is stable, effective, and robust in the presence of several disturbances and that biodiesel quality can be maintained despite these disturbances. This is the first study to develop a complete PWC system for a homogeneously catalyzed two-step biodiesel production from WCO.