Process optimization of biodiesel production using antlion optimizer

The continuous consumption of energy, particularly fuel received from petroleum products is becoming uncontrollable and contributing to the extreme build-up of greenhouse gases in the environment. The production of biodiesel from the vegetable oils is definitely an alternative source to reduce the ill effects of greenhouse gases. Usually the production of biodiesel (alkyl ester) is performed with transesterification process using response surface methodology. In this paper, the problem of optimizing the production of biodiesel (methyl ester) is performed using a new nature inspired optimization technique called antlion optimizer (ALO). The optimization problem is modelled into a single objective optimization problem and a combination of three parameters called temperature (X-1), methanol/oil ratio (X-2) and dolomite catalyst concentration (X-3) has been optimized to maximize the production of biodiesel (methyl ester). The results show significant improvement in production of methyl ester (biodiesel) yield using proposed Antlion Optimization algorithm.