Carbon Audit and Discussion for Biodiesel Production

For biodiesel production, a transesterification process is used to convert the extracted and purified lipids into FAME. The process involves different unit operations. However, the emission sources can be categorised based on either steam or electric­ity usage. Both emissions are Scope 2. For the modelled facility, 1,834 MJ/year of steam and 470,716.3 kWh/year electricity are required. For this study, it was assumed that a natural gas boiler is used to produce the required steam and the emis­sions are calculated based on the amount of natural gas needed to produce the required energy. Net emissions from the production of biodiesel are 668.42 tonnes of CO2-e/year. 85% of the emissions are due to power requirements in running the pumps and the remaining 15% is due to the production of steam. The extraction design chosen has a significant amount of pumping and filtration units, all of which are energy-intensive processes.