DESIGN OF A MOBILE BIO DIESEL PRODUCTION PLANT
ABSTRACT
The Brazilian National Program for Pro-duction and Use of Biodiesel (PNPB) was launched in 2004 by the Brazilian Government with the objective of guarantee-ing an economically viable production of biodiesel, while favoring social inclusion and regional development. Thus, great emphasis was put on small scale production of vegetable oils with attractive fiscal incentives for underdeveloped regions of Brazil. However, no fiscal incentives were planned for the manufacturing of biodiesel production units and their construction and operation are usually costly and out of reach for small-scale producers. Thus, it was the aim of this work to design and construct a mobile biodiesel production plant and verify its feasibility in providing a service to small-scale oil producers in which the oil is processed into biodiesel and the producers costs are only those related to the processing of the oil. In other words, the mobile unit travels from one oil producing farm to another processing the oil into biodiesel which is kept by the oil producers for their own use. The constructed unit is fully operational and has a production capacity of a 100 Liters of biodiesel per hour. The unit was mounted on a truck and it is com-prised of a stirred reactor, a decanter and a distillation unit for biodiesel purification.