Biodiesel production through sinergy of on-field PVO extraction and protein cake gasification

This work is aimed at demonstrating the advantages of on-field oil extraction and protein cake exploitation from biomasses produced by a three-years crop rotation. The rotation that has been taken into account is rapeseed-sunflowerflax, suitable for most Mediterranean climatic zones. The process is divided in differents phases: extraction of pure vegetable oil (PVO) from seeds, gasification of the protein cake remaining from oil extraction and trans-esterification of the PVO using the methanol obtained by conversion of part of the syngas from gasification. In this way, instead of selling the seeds to the market, it is possible to sell the biodiesel and the electrical energy obtained from an IC engine operating with the excess of syngas. The effectiveness evaluation of this approach has been obtained through energetic and economical modeling of the whole system. The system has been simulated using ASPEN PLUSTM and MATLABTM codes. The results show the advantages related to the installation of micro power plants of 10 kWel, involving little surfaces tilled. The minimum surface necessary for system self-sustainability has been estimated as a function of field productivity and fuels characteristics. Moreover, the outputs of the economical analysis show the effectiveness of this innovative approach.