Design and Development of an Efficient Screw Press Expeller for Oil Expression from Jatropha Curcas Seeds: A Computational Flow Dynamics Study of Expeller for Performance Analysis

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• 作者：Ali Bahadar ; M. B. Khan ; Taqi Mehran
• 刊名：Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research
• 出版年：2013
• 出版时间：February 6, 2013
• 年：2013
• 卷：52
• 期：5
• 页码：2123-2129
• 全文大小：454K
• 年卷期：v.52,no.5(February 6, 2013)
• ISSN：1520-5045

文摘

Diminishing fossil fuel resources, unstable/increasing prices of oil, environmental issues, global warming/climatic shifts, and allied problems have led the world to focus on alternate, environmental friendly, and renewable energy sources. Among many experimental candidates, production of biodiesel from Jatropha curcas L. has gained significant importance. More than 40 countries in the world are evaluating the potential of using this pure plant oil for manufacturing diesel. USEPA鈥檚 action sets the 2013 volume at 1.28 billion gallons under the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. With this premise, it is imperative to identify innovative technologies to handle Jatropha biomass and its efficient oil extraction for economical biofuel production. This study is aimed to make efficient screw expeller to cater massive Jatropha biomass for its oil extraction. A computational flow dynamics (CFD) simulation is performed to estimate the pressure developed inside the barrel through screw pressing when the feedstock is Jatropha seed. This CFD study has helped to determine the optimum values of important operating variables like rotations per minute (rpm), backpressure caused by frictional forces, and effect of changing feed flow rate on the performance of the expeller. The performance of the expeller is measured by power consumption, yield, and efficiency. Experimental validation of the simulation is used to improve oil expeller for Jatropha seed by fabricating the expeller after the analysis of design by ANSYS FLUENT codes. An oil yield in excess of 98%, as compared to a maximum 75% for existing screw expellers, was achieved in practical runs which is very promising.