Bioresource Technology 101 (2010) 52665274

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Bioresource Technology
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/biortech

Process simulation and economical evaluation of enzymatic biodiesel

production plant
Lene Fjerbaek Sotoft *, Ben-Guang Rong, Knud V. Christensen, Birgir Norddahl
Institute of Chemical Engineering, Biotechnology and Environmental Technology, University of Southern Denmark, Campusvej 55, DK-5230 Odense M, Denmark

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Received 27 November 2009
Received in revised form 25 January 2010
Accepted 26 January 2010
Available online 19 February 2010
Keywords:
Enzyme
Biodiesel
Process simulation
Process design
Process economy

a b s t r a c t
Process simulation and economical evaluation of an enzymatic biodiesel production plant has been carried out. Enzymatic biodiesel production from high quality rapeseed oil and methanol has been investigated for solvent free and cosolvent production processes. Several scenarios have been investigated with
different production scales (8 and 200 mio. kg biodiesel/year) and enzyme price. The cosolvent production process is found to be most expensive and is not a viable choice, while the solvent free process is
viable for the larger scale production of 200 mio. kg biodiesel/year with the current enzyme price. With
the suggested enzyme price of the future, both the small and large scale solvent free production proved
viable. The product price was estimated to be 0.731.49/kg biodiesel with the current enzyme price and
0.050.75/kg with the enzyme price of the future for solvent free process.
2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
The major operation in biodiesel production that decides the
process route is the transesterication of the vegetable oil or
animal fat into fatty acid methyl esters (FAME), the primary
product. Typically methanol is used for the transesterication
producing methyl esters and glycerin as byproduct (see Eq. (1)).
This reaction can be carried out by various forms of catalysts,
but so far industrially only chemical homogeneous catalysts are
used in large scale. Smaller pilot plants with enzymatic catalysts
are reported, but not to a very large scale (Du et al., 2008). In
order to evaluate the potential and remaining obstacles of introducing enzymes as the preferred industrial catalyst, analysis of
economical as well as environmental impacts of the alternative
processes must be evaluated compared to the conventional
process. The economy of the traditional production method has
been thoroughly analyzed as by Haas et al. (2006), though the
raw material price has increased since the publication of Haas
et al. (2006). The raw material price based on 0.52 US$/kg
soybean oil accounted for 88% of the production costs in a
37.900 m3 biodiesel/year continuous production plant (Haas
et al., 2006).

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +45 6550 7443; fax: +45 6550 7354.
E-mail address: lfj@kbm.sdu.dk (L.F. Sotoft).
0960-8524/$ - see front matter 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.biortech.2010.01.130

1
The industrial production of biodiesel has had a very turbulent
lifetime due to the changes in prices of raw materials and fossil
fuels as well as regulatory changes and production capacity of
biodiesel. All of this affects the process economy on a global scale.
When looking at the sustainability of producing biodiesel, this has
been questioned in particular with respect to virgin oils as raw
materials (Reijnders and Huijbregts, 2008). Nevertheless, if biodiesel is to be produced, an industrial process must be able to produce
a product that meets the specications, i.e., for Europe (EN 14214,
2008).
Traditional homogeneous and alternative heterogeneous chemical catalysts and supercritical conditions have been evaluated with
regard to process economy for a continuous and batch processes
(Table 1). Batch process evaluation has also been carried out by
Sakai et al. (2009) and Noordam and Withers (1996) including
homogeneous and heterogeneous chemical catalysts and various

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Table 1
Comparison of previous studies of process economy of biodiesel production.

Sakai et al. (2009)

Noordam and Withers (1996)a
Marchetti and Errazu (2008)
West et al. (2008)
Zhang et al. (2003b)
Nelson et al. (1994)
Bender (1999)
You et al. (2008)
Haas et al. (2006)
Zhang et al. (2003b)
Bender (1999)
Santana et al. (in press)
van Kasteren and Nisworo (2007)a
West et al. (2008)a
a

Production size (mio. kg/year)

Operation mode

Raw material

Glycerol sales included

Product price (/kg)

7.26
7.8
36.04
8
8
100
101.20
8100
33.31
8
1.76
10.5
8125
8

Batch
Batch
Continuous
Continuous
Continuous
Continuous
Continuous
Continuous
Continuous
Continuous
Continuous
Continuous
Continuous
Continuous

Waste cooking oil

Canola oil
Waste cooking oil
Waste cooking oil
Waste cooking oil
Beef tallow
Animal fats
Soybean oil
Soybean oil
Virgin vegetable oil
Canola oil
Castor oil
Waste cooking oil
Waste cooking oil

No
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes

0.180.19
0.55
0.320.33
0.14
0.46
0.25
0.26
0.490.62
0.38
0.62
0.33
1.56
0.15
0.66

Supercritical process, no other catalysts.

production ranges as well as two different product purication

methods. Batch processes are only relevant compared with existing
batch processing plants economy, since if biodiesel is to be produced viable as a true bulk chemical then continuous operation
is the only realistic option (Seider et al., 2004). Super critical conditions eliminate the need of catalyst and increase reaction rate (Saka
and Kusdiana, 2001), but is a very costly production method.
For continuous processes, the prices for produced biodiesel
were 0.140.46 and 0.330.62/kg when using waste cooking oils,
etc. and virgin vegetable oils, respectively (see Table 1). Batch production has been estimated to give biodiesel at 0.180.19 and
0.55/kg for waste cooking oil and canola oil, respectively (see Table 1). This is for as well homogeneously as heterogeneously catalyzed processes. Most studies include a glycerol credit with a price/
kg glycerol depending on the quality of the glycerol. Therefore, this
study also includes this for comparative purposes.
Several processes of theoretical industrial scales have been simulated, but generally lack incorporation of realistic data and actual
industrial performance for mass and energy balances. Therefore,
some of the simulation results, i.e., water consumption and waste
fractions are unrealistically low. As an example, Zhang et al.
(2003a) have done a simulation work for four cases, including alkaline catalysis with NaOH of virgin oils and waste cooking oil as well
as acid catalysis with either traditional water washing or hexane
extraction of methyl esters. The simulation included a liquidliquid
extraction (water washing) of about 1177.20 kg/h biodiesel with
11 kg/h of water, which seems an unrealistic ratio of water to biodiesel when compared to real industrial unit operation in biodiesel
production. Waste water from a biodiesel production can be as
much as 47.5 kg for production of 100 kg biodiesel (Daka Biodiesel,
2009). The former simulation results leads to an underestimation of
the total water consumption. A more realistic mass ratio of water to
oil of 1:1 is, i.e., used by Santana et al. (in press) for a process catalyzed by NaOH with castor oil and ethanol as raw materials. The latter simulation gives more reliable results with respect to water
consumption and liquidliquid extractor size and price.
Some industrial processes use KOH as catalyst instead of NaOH.
Where the cheaper NaOH gives water soluble salts after neutralization with acid, the more expensive KOH gives a precipitate of
potassium sulphate and phosphate when neutralizing with sulphuric and phosphoric acid, respectively. The precipitation of salts
reduces the total water consumption, because the water can be
recirculated to an extent which is impossible when using NaOH.
The precipitated salt can furthermore be sold as fertilizer. This is
the technology used industrially by BDI Biodiesel International.
Only the use of KOH as by BDI can justify low total water consumption for the whole process due to water recycle, while the use of
NaOH (as by Zhang et al. (2003a)) as a catalyst cannot. In both

cases, the water consumption of the liquidliquid extraction step

isolated is of the same magnitude, but the potential water for recycling is very different.
None of the references in Table 1 involves biodiesel production
catalyzed by enzymes. Enzymes are more expensive and slower
reacting than traditional chemical catalysts, but give a much easier
and simpler biodiesel purication. A life cycle comparison including biocatalysts has been carried out by Harding et al. (2008), but
the analysis need optimization on several points. Water washing
is not needed when using enzymes, but still included in the study.
The washing step is only used when chemical salt catalyst residues,
i.e., sodium ions, must be removed from the biodiesel. This is
therefore a redundant step when using enzymes.
The prospect of the present paper is to bring biodiesel production with enzymes as catalysts closer to industrial scale application
and elucidate the main obstacles that need to be solved for the process to be economically and environmentally sustainable.
Therefore, the paper evaluates several important and highly relevant scenarios for enzyme catalyzed biodiesel production processes. Simulations with methanol and solvent-free/co-solvent
operations are carried out to investigate how this affect enzyme
performance and process design and to elucidate what effect this
has on the process economy. That is, too high concentrations of
methanol inhibit the enzymes and reduce their lifetime. Therefore,
optimal feeding of the methanol is crucial within the process. The
process must be operated with maximum 1 mol methanol per

Table 2
Scenarios and data used for process simulation.
Scenario
Alcohol
Cosolvent
Enzyme pricea
(US$/kg)
Data provided by

Productivity
(Fjerbaek et al.,
2009) (kg
biodiesel/kg
enzyme)b
Yield and reaction
time
Production size
(tons/year)
a

1
Methanol
No
1000/10
(762.71/
7.627)
Shimada
et al.
(1999)
1200

2
Methanol
No
1000/10

3
Methanol
tert-Butanol
1000/10

4
Methanol
tert-Butanol
1000/10

Shimada
et al.
(1999)
1200

Li et al. (2006)

Li et al. (2006)

4250

4250

>96% and
48 h
8000

>96% and
48 h
200,000

95% and 12 h

95% and 12 h

8000

200,000

The enzyme prices equal 762.71 and 7.627/kg, respectively.

Productivity calculated from 95% yield, 54 cycles and 4 wt.% enzyme out of
reaction mixture.
b

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L.F. Sotoft et al. / Bioresource Technology 101 (2010) 52665274

mole triglyceride and addition of methanol several times to reach

full conversion.
A way to minimize methanol inhibition and increase enzyme
lifetime and mass transfer is to use a cosolvent as tert-butanol together with the raw materials oil and methanol. Simulations with
tert-butanol as a cosolvent is also included to determine what effect the increase in process volume, the need of solvent recovery
and higher enzyme life time has to the overall process economy. Finally, this paper includes two scenarios with the current price
(762.71/kg enzyme, Fjerbaek et al., 2009) and a more attractive
price of enzymes in the future (7.627/kg enzyme, Mittelbach,
2005) as well as two scenarios with respect to enzyme life time
without solvent (1200 kg biodiesel/kg enzyme) and with solvent
(4250 kg biodiesel/kg enzyme), see Table 2.
2. Process design
As discussed earlier, it is the catalyst employed in the transesterication that determines the process routes for the biodiesel production. To illustrate the differences of process structures when
exchanging traditional homogeneous chemical catalysts with heterogeneous biocatalysts, the process diagram for a traditional biodiesel production with KOH and downstream processing is shown
as Fig. 1.
The production of biodiesel by the process is carried out in both
batch and continuous mode industrially. Alcohol and catalyst are
mixed initially before entering a tank reactor together with oil.
Alcohol is added in stoichiometric surplus. After reaction to a specied extent, the product mixture is sent to a distillation tower for
removal and recycle of excess methanol. The bottom product is
then washed with water in a liquidliquid extraction tower. Polar
substances as glycerol, salts and residual substances are then neutralized with acid in the water phase and separated by distillation
into water for recycle, glycerol and solid fertilizer for sale plus a
waste fraction. The fertilizer is only produced in plants using
KOH as catalyst and H3PO4 for neutralization.
The non-polar product phase is puried by distillation to meet
specications. If a high quality raw material is used, only water
is removed as the top product, while the bottom product is the biodiesel product. If lower quality raw materials like used cooking oils
or animal fats are used, then the biodiesel also needs distillation
and is taken out as an additional top product. This step depends
on reaction yield and product specications.
Modication of the design is carried out for raw materials containing much free fatty acids. In this case, an esterication step catalyzed by acids is introduced before the caustic transesterication
reaction.

For enzymatic industrial biodiesel production, the process design is very different from the traditional setup. Enzymes and oil
are mixed in the reactor after which alcohol is added. Due to inhibition of alcohol to the enzymes, the alcohol is added stepwise in stoichiometric decit, i.e., three stepwise additions of 1 mol alcohol per
mole triglyceride. The downstream processing is then a lter to retain and recirculate the enzymes followed by a decanter to separate
the non-polar and polar phases. Excess methanol is again removed
by distillation from the polar phase and recycled. The polar glycerol
as the bottom product has a very high purity, since it is not mixed
with water. The non-polar phase is distilled due to the lower yield
of the enzymatic process at the time being compared to the traditionally catalyzed processes in order to meet specications.
The perfect scenario for enzymes would be no methanol inhibition and 100% yield, which would make the product distillation
step dispensable and considerable reduce energy requirements.
Methanol inhibition can be diminished using tert-butanol as a
cosolvent. This increases enzyme lifetime and reaction rate, but
introduces an additional unit operation due to solvent recovery
by distillation. An advantage though is that the inhibition is diminished, so that all methanol can be added in stoichiometric amounts
in one reactor. This greatly simplies the reaction system.
Overall, it is important to notice that the use of enzymes gives
some favorable changes as to the required number of unit operations, energy consumption, waste production and glycerol product
quality. Table 3 shows the needed unit operations or equipment
when producing biodiesel with traditional catalysts and enzymes.
The latter both with and without a cosolvent.
Three reactors and decanters in series are required for the solvent free enzymatic process compared to one reactor and decanter
for as well the traditional as the cosolvent enzymatic process. Distillation for methanol recovery and biodiesel purication is needed
for all three process types, while no washing is required for any
enzymatic process. The difference between the solvent free and
cosolvent enzymatic processes is the need for solvent recovery
by distillation for the latter process type. These requirements will
inuence the ow sheet, process simulation and economical analysis for each process type.
In the following section, a more detailed description of the simulations carried out is presented.
3. Process simulation
Several scenarios are simulated for investigation, all aiming at
industrial scale enzymatic biodiesel productions regarding process
design and economy. Two production sizes are chosen for evaluation. A yearly production of 8 mio. kg biodiesel is chosen for

Fig. 1. Process ow diagram for traditional biodiesel production with homogeneous KOH catalyst.

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Table 3
Unit operations/equipment needed (major) for different biodiesel production process types.
Process type
Catalyst
Solvent

Traditional
Homogeneous chemical
No

Enzyme solventfree
Heterogeneous enzyme
No

Enzyme cosolvent
Heterogeneous enzyme
tert-Butanol

Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
No

Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
No

Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes

Process
Tank reactor and number
Decanter and number
Tank reactor esterication if high in FFA
Decanter/centrifuge after esterication if high in FFA

Yes, 1
Yes, 1
Yes
Yes

Yes, 3
Yes, 3
No
No

Yes, 1
Yes, 1
No
No

Purication
Distillation methanol recovery
Washing (LL extraction)
Distillation water recovery
Neutralization
Drying for technical grade glycerol
Distillation for pharma. grade glycerol
Salt wash and drying
Distillation FAME
Distillation solvent recovery

Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
In some cases
No

Yes
No
No
No
No
No
No
Yes, at present
No

Yes
No
No
No
No
No
No
Yes, at present
Yes

Storage
Storage
Storage
Storage
Storage
Storage

tank
tank
tank
tank
tank

biodiesel
glycerol
MeOH
oil
tert-butanol

Fig. 2. Simulation process and STream data of the process for 1000 kg/h solvent free production of biodiesel with enzymes in three continuous stirred tank reactors in series.

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comparison reasons to existing simulations, see Table 1. A signicantly larger production scale of 200 mio. kg biodiesel/year is also
chosen in order to compare with a Danish biodiesel producer
expanding to this yearly production capacity.
Four scenarios are selected as relevant for simulation and investigation. They combine variations in production size and cosolvent/
solvent free production. Each scenario has further been analyzed
with respect to two enzyme prices; the current market price and
a potential signicantly lower price in the future (Mittelbach,
2005). The scenarios are presented in Table 2. The background to
the experimental reaction data and enzyme performance is taken
from existing literature, while the current prices of enzymes are taken from Fjerbaek et al. (2009).
The model substrate is based on oleic acid as the overall fatty acid
structure, where rapeseed oil is modeled as trioleate and biodiesel as
methyl oleate. The substrate is chosen not to contain water or free
fatty acids. The raw material is assumed to have 0.3 nonreacting

material based on information about the nonreacting fraction from

an existing rapeseed biodiesel plant (Emmelev Molle, 2009).
The process simulations are carried out in Aspen Plus 2006.5
and Aspen Icarus Process Evaluator 2006.5 together with the method of Peters et al. (2003). A UNIFAC-DMD thermodynamic model is
used for estimation of activity coefcients, as it has been found to
provide good t between estimated and measured methanolbiodiesel and methanolglycerol vaporliquid equilibrium data
(Kuramochi et al., 2009).
In Aspen Plus 2006.5, owsheets are constructed and simulations are carried out with satisfying results for streams and unit
operations. The owsheets for solvent free and cosolvent simulations with stream data for 8 mio. kg biodiesel/year can be seen as
Figs. 2 and 3.
Solvent free production must be carried out in less than stoichiometric ratio of oil and methanol preferably three times 1 mol
methanol per mole of oil. Therefore, the setup is constructed as

Fig. 3. Simulation process and STream data of the process for 1000 kg/h production of biodiesel with enzymes and cosolvent tert-butanol in one continuous stirred tank
reactor.

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L.F. Sotoft et al. / Bioresource Technology 101 (2010) 52665274

three continuous stirred tank reactors in series (reactors 13). After

each reactor, a decanter is needed to remove formed glycerol to
avoid potential inhibition of enzymes by glycerol and increase
the overall yield (decanters 13). The biodiesel product is distilled
(Estcol) to ensure high product quality by removal of unreacted
material as the remnant and biodiesel as the distillate of
99.8 wt.% methyl oleate.
The polar phase containing methanol and glycerol is separated
in a distillation column (Glycol). The methanol is recycled back
as a feed stream, and the glycerol with a purity of 99 wt.% can be
sold as byproduct. No purge stream of methanol has been found
necessary, since there is no knowledge of any accumulation of polar substances in this phase.

The cosolvent production process is setup with one continuous

stirred tank reactor (reactor), since the presence of tert-butanol
diminishes the inhibition of the enzymes if methanol is present
in a stoichiometric ratio. The solvent and unreacted methanol is
then removed from the product phase by distillation (Solcol),
where the distillate (ptertbut) is split into a recycle and a purge
stream.
A decanter is needed after the solvent recovery column for separation of the polar glycerol phase from the product and unreacted
oil phase (decanter).
The biodiesel phase is then distilled (Estcol) to ensure high
product quality by removal of unreacted material as the remnant
and biodiesel as the distillate of 99.7 wt.% methyl oleate.

Table 4
Equipment costs and corrected total capital investment.
Scenario

Part
Storage
Storage
Storage
Storage
Storage
Storage

8,000,000 kg/year
Solvent free
Cost ()
102,700
25,000
24,200
80,200

200,000,000 kg/year
Solvent free
Cost ()
1,029,400
155,400
155,400
669,200

8,000,000 kg/year
cosolvent
Cost ()
108,900
24,900
24,000
80,200
10,200

200,000,000 kg/year
cosolvent
Cost ()
1,122,900
155,400
150,500
669,200
21,900

Process
P1
P2
P3
P4
P5
P6
P7
H1
Reactor 1
Reactor 2
Reactor 3
Decante 1
Decante 2
Decante 3

4340
4120
4120
4120
3670
4340
4340
77,200
260,010
237,240
237,240
13,050
13,050
13,050

4230
4340
4340
4340
7400
7300
7300
32,000
1,614,510
1,512,810
1,480,320
19,800
19,800
18,810

4340
4120
4000
9000

52,300
328,320

32,850

7300
4560
4120
8300

21,800
2,306,250

284,580

Purication
P8
P9
P10
P11
P12
P13
P14
H2
H3
H4
H5
Estcol-tower
Estcol-cond
Estcol-cond acc
Estcol-reux pump
Estcol-reb
Glycol-tower
Glycol-cond
Glycol-cond acc
Glycol-reux pump
Glycol-reb
Solcol-tower
Solcol-cond
Solcol-cond acc
Solcol-reux pump
Solcol-reb

4340
4120
4120
4120
4120
4120
4000
52,300

72,800
15,900
7020
4340
83,500
18,700
20,700
2205
4000
20,400

7200
3560
4230
4230
4230
4560
4120
21,000

504,700
29,700
17,010
8300
1,090,000
28,200
20,700
2205
4120
34,300

4340
4340
4120
4120
4000
4120

53,500
53,500
95,500
24,300
72,400
18,400
7020
4340
31,700
18,000
20,700
2205
4000
20,600
54,500
16,200
43,200
4450
34,300

8800
7200
7200
4560
4230
4340

21,700
20,900
30,900
63,900
495,700
24,200
18,450
8500
382,700
24,000
16,200
2205
4000
31,400
383,800
77,300
366,120
10,000
590,700

Total plant equipment cost

Total direct cost
Fixed capital investment
Total capital investment (TCI)

1,442,795
2,861,600
8,143,873
8,551,067

8,531,865
11,891,200
18,337,200
19,110,157

1,286,985
3,100,300
9,703,210
10,188,370

7,419,315
13,592,900
25,868,023
27,161,424

tank
tank
tank
tank
tank

biodiesel
glycerol
MeOH
oil
tert-butanol

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L.F. Sotoft et al. / Bioresource Technology 101 (2010) 52665274

Again, the polar phase containing methanol, tert-butanol and

glycerol is separated in a distillation column (Glycol). The methanol and tert-butanol is recycled back, and the glycerol with a purity
of 99.99 wt.% can be sold. Purge of methanol has again been found
unnecessary.
The simulation results are now available for the economical
evaluation.
4. Economical evaluation
Based on the ow sheets and simulations above, an equipment
size and cost estimation of the process equipment and corrected
total capital investment (TCI) have been carried out for the four
scenarios in Aspen Icarus Process Evaluator 2006.5. TCI includes
working capital. This is then combined into an economical plant
evaluation. The scenarios include 8 and 200 mio. kg biodiesel production plant a year with either cosolvent or solvent free with an
enzyme price of 762.71 and 7.627/kg. Consumption of enzymes
is calculated based on expected productivity, see Table 2.
The economical evaluations are carried out for a continuous
biodiesel production plant. The storage capacity is 2 weeks for
raw materials and 3 weeks of production for products based on
Table 5
Operational data and revenue values for this study.

a
b

Item

Cost

Enzyme
Methanol
Rapeseed oil
tert-Butanol
Biodiesel
Glycerol (92 wt.%)
Cooling water
Electricity
Number of shifts
Working weeks/year
Pricing
Working capital
Operating and laboratory charges
Overhead
Taxes
General and administrative expenses (G&A)
Depreciation model
Plant type
Location

762.71/kg (7.627/kg)
0.295/kg
0.607/kg
1.70/kg
1.112/kga
0.8667/kgb
1.34/m3
0.26/kWh
3
52 weeks
, 0.76/US$
5%
15%/period
5%
15%/period
8%/period
10%/year in 10 years
Bare eld project
Europe

Based on market price for biodiesel January 2009.

The price is taken from Zhang et al. (2003b).

information from an existing biodiesel production plant. In the sizing of the unit operations, the enzyme volume and handling is not
included due to the uncertainty of this. Only the price, reaction
time and yield of them are included in this study.
Equipment cost for each operational unit and TCI can be seen in
Table 4.
The total capital investment (TCI) is lower for solvent free production than with the cosolvent. The plant equipment cost alone is
lower for the cosolvent production, but the installation costs of the
solvent recovery column is higher than equipment and installation
costs of the extra reactors and decanters needed when running solvent free. The TCI increases with plant size, see Fig. 4, but the lowest TCI is for solvent free production plants in the investigated
range compared to the use of cosolvent. The use of cosolvent requires extra distillation facilities that are more expensive than
the extra number of reactors and decanters needed for solvent free
operation.
It has previously been documented for biodiesel by Zhang et al.
(2003b), that plant size has a great inuence on the outcome of an
economical biodiesel process evaluation. This study shows that TCI
increases with production size, but not linearly and consequently
the larger the plant the more potentially cost-effective is the plant.
This is valid for solvent free and cosolvent operation alike.
The total production costs and payback period as well as product price are calculated based on the simulation results. The total
production costs are the sum of raw materials including enzymes
at 762.71 or 7.627/kg, utilities, labor, maintenance, supervision,
operating charges, plant overhead and G&A.
Operational data, raw material prices and revenue values can be
seen in Table 5. The price of tert-butanol is supplied by a European
industrial solvent supplier. The glycerol price is a signicant factor
in the overall process economy. Though a higher quality of glycerol
can be obtained with enzymes, because the purication does not
involve water washing, the price is set relatively low (the price
of 92 wt.% glycerol). This is done in order to not overestimate the
price and to lower the inuence of the glycerol price on the viability of a plant.
Total product price (Peters et al., 2003) is then calculated by the
following equation:

Product price

Manufacturing costs
Production rate

Manufacturing costs TPC Fixed costs  Byproduct sales

Fixed costs Taxes Depreciation Rate of return  TCI

Table 6
Total production cost of biodiesel and payback period calculation for enzymatic biodiesel production plant.
Scenario
Enzyme cost (/kg)
Direct production costs
Raw materials
Utilities
Labor, maintenance, supervision
Operating Charges
Plant Overhead
G&A
Total production cost (TPC)
Fixed costs
Depreciation
Taxes
Byproduct sales
Product price (/kg)a
Payback periodb
a
b

1
762.71

2
762.71

3
762.71

4
762.71

1
7.627

2
7.627

3
7.627

4
7.627

16,900,439
984,191
862,000
114,000
43,100
1,512,298
20,416,028

407,708,992
2,602,900
1,409,000
114,000
70,450
32,952,427
444,857,769

12,815,552
11,002,632
822,700
114,000
41,135
1,983,682
26,779,701

318,650,433
267,388,536
1,238,000
114,000
61,900
46,996,229
634,449,098

11,862,495
984,191
862,000
114,000
43,100
1,109,263
14,975,049

281,869,015
2,602,900
1,409,000
114,000
70,450
22,772,509
307,428,874

11,390,692
11,002,632
822,700
114,000
41,135
1,869,693
25,240,852

283,107,950
267,388,536
1,238,000
114,000
61,900
44,152,831
596,063,217

855,108
1,282,660
12,308,202
1.49 (3.03)
N/A

1,734,161
2,601,242
307,789,665
0.73 (2.27)
0.25

1,018,837
1,528,256
12,303,633
2.38 (3.92)
N/A

2,716,142
4,074,214
307,294,295
1.70 (3.23)
N/A

855,107
1,282,660
12,308,202
0.75 (2.35)
3.59

1,925,406
2,888,109
307,769,240
0.05 (1.59)
0.09

1,018,837
1,528,256
12,303,633
2.19 (3.72)
N/A

2,716,142
4,074,214
307.294.295
1.50 (3.04)
N/A

Price without parenthesis is with byproduct sales, while price in paranthesis is without byproduct sales.
Based on market price for biodiesel and glycerol January 2009 and enzyme price of 762.71/kg and 7.627/kg.

L.F. Sotoft et al. / Bioresource Technology 101 (2010) 52665274

Fig. 4. Total capital investment in M as a function of plant size.

The results are presented in Table 6 for an enzyme price of

762.71 and 7.627/kg together with an analysis of payback period.
Analysis of payback period (Peters et al., 2003) is calculated by Eqs.
(4), (2), and (3)

Payback period

TCI
Biodiesel sales  Manufacturing costs

First, results for scenarios with the current enzyme price. Only
the large solvent free plant is cost-effective with a very short payback period of 0.25 year (based on a product price of 1.12/kg). If a
minimum product price on the other hand is calculated, the minimum product price is 0.73/kg biodiesel. The scenarios of cosolvent operation and small scale solvent free are not cost-effective
and have a minimum product price from 1.49 to 2.38/kg. The
cosolvent operation is largely made uneconomical due to the large
utility (energy) requirements.
At an enzyme cost of 7.627/kg, the annual manufacturing cost
of biodiesel and calculation of payback period for enzymatic biodiesel production plant is very different.
The enzyme price is seen greatly to inuence the economic viability and product price for the scenarios. Neither cosolvent scenarios are cost-effective, while the solvent free operation in large scale
is very viable with a payback period of 0.09 year and a minimum
product price of 0.05/kg. The extremely low product price is due
to the earnings on byproduct sales. The small scale solvent free scenario has a low minimum product price of 0.75/kg, which is lower
than the estimated market price, but the payback period is just in
the upper end of what is viable. Generally, viable processes must

5273

have a payback period below 2 years for high-risk ventures, and

>4 years for payback are not considered viable (Seider et al.,
2004). Due to uncertainties and the new, but unstable market of
biofuels, this kind of venture must be considered as high-risk.
Therefore, the economical potential of the smaller scale plant must
be considered carefully.
The results are though very promising, and enzymatic biodiesel seems closer to be a realistically viable industrial process.
With this study, the use of cosolvents and enzymes cannot be
considered as a possible industrial viable production procedure,
but the focus of research must alone be to improve solvent free
processes.
The scenarios in this paper are based on a price for a high value
raw material; rape seed oil. When comparing the calculated prices
with the literature studies shown in Table 1, it can be seen that the
price of 0.052.38/kg depending on production scale and enzyme
price is in the same range as the literature values of 0.140.62/kg
for continuous processes.
Comparison of the product price for production of 8 mio. kg biodiesel/year will show that the literature studies can produce biodiesel for 0.550.62/kg with high quality raw materials and
traditional catalysts, while this study shows that it can be produced solvent free at 0.751.49/kg with enzymes. Enzymes are
thus more expensive to use, but if improvements in enzyme lifetime and yield can be made together with signicant, documented
improvements in the environmental impact of the enzymatic production process then enzymatic biodiesel production is closer to
become reality.
A question also to be answered by this study is how the enzymes do inuence the productions costs. To examine the distribution of the production costs, Fig. 5 presents the manufacturing
costs allocated to the different costs minus revenue from byproduct sales for production of 8 and 200 mio. kg biodiesel/year.
For all operations, the major cost factor is raw materials followed by byproduct sales and utilities. The enzyme price has a signicant inuence on the cost of the solvent free operation, but not
to the same extent when it comes to the cosolvent operation due to
the higher productivity of the enzymes in the latter. Byproduct
sales are very high and important for the process economy, but
are the same for all scenarios. Cost of utilities is much higher for
the cosolvent than for the solvent free production for all scenarios,
see Fig. 5. This outweighs the improved enzyme performance, and
therefore the manufacturing costs are higher for cosolvent than
solvent free production regardless of production scale and enzyme
cost.
A more detailed analysis of the raw material costs shows how
the cost of oil, methanol and enzymes affect this group of costs,
see Fig. 6.

Fig. 5. Distribution of manufacturing costs for production of 8 and 200 mio. kg biodiesel/year.

5274

L.F. Sotoft et al. / Bioresource Technology 101 (2010) 52665274

References

Fig. 6. Distribution of raw material costs for solvent free and cosolvent enzymatic
biodiesel production.

It can be seen that for solvent free operation that costs of raw
materials is 50% enzymes, 47% oil and 3% methanol, while the
inuence of enzyme cost is lower for cosolvent operation due to
the improved enzyme performance. For cosolvent operation, the
oil makes up 73% of the raw material costs, while the enzymes only
make up for 22%. Four percentage of the costs can be contributed to
the methanol, while the tert-butanol only accounts for 1% due to
recycle.
In summary this study documents the possibility of using enzymes for a viable solvent free biodiesel production. The result depends highly on production scale and on raw material price for as
well oil as enzymes. The energy consumption of the cosolvent production makes it too expensive compared to the solvent free
process.
The present study and the study by Zhang et al. (2003b) show
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the plant economy is very inuenced by them making planning
and protability analysis very complicated. This though holds for
all biodiesel plants, and is not limited to enzyme catalyzed plants.

5. Conclusion
An enzyme catalyzed biodiesel production plant is simulated
and economically evaluated for production of 8 and 200 mio. kg/
year biodiesel from rapeseed oil and methanol. The product price
for solvent free production is estimated to 0.731.49/kg biodiesel
with a price of 762.71/kg enzyme and 0.050.75/kg biodiesel
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enzymes and cosolvent to a price of 1.502.38/kg biodiesel. Solvent free enzyme biodiesel production process is viable and shows
most promise, while the use of a cosolvent together with enzymes
is not viable.

Acknowledgement
The work was supported by The Danish Council for Strategic
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