Process Systems Engineering for Biofuels Development

4Challenges in the Modeling of Thermodynamic Properties and Phase Equilibrium Calculations for Biofuels Process Design

Roumiana P. Stateva¹ and Georgi St. Cholakov²

¹ Institute of Chemical Engineering, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, 1113 Sofia, Bulgaria

² Department of Organic Synthesis and Fuels, University of Chemical Technology and Metallurgy, 1756 Sofia, Bulgaria

4.1 Introduction

Global warming and environmental pollution from fossil fuels have become major issues. Fossil fuel resources are limited and create problems globally, but are of even greater concern for Europe, which relies heavily on their import from other countries.

The alternative is biofuels, which are renewable and less polluting. They are the key to the EU directive requiring 10% of all transportation fuels to be renewable by 2020, and achieving 25% in 2030 and beyond without compromising agricultural production. Similar solutions are implemented globally and concern also other energy needs (electricity, heat, etc.), so the problem of intensification of the production and use of biofuels is a major issue of the future development of our civilization.

The successful achievement of the described targets presents chemical and biochemical engineering challenges that need to be addressed recurrently and evaluated systematically both from the point of view of production of biofuels and of the evaluation of their environmental impact. The major goal of the required green engineering is to design computationally, ...