Journal of Fundamentals of Renewable Energy and Applications
Open Access
ISSN: 2090-4541
+44 1300 500008
ISSN: 2090-4541
+44 1300 500008
Andreia F Peixoto
INNOVCAT, Portugal
Faculdade de Ci�ªncias da Universidade do Porto, Portugal
Posters & Accepted Abstracts: J Fundam Renewable Energy App
Nowadays, social and economic demands as well as environmental concerns call for the development of alternative and sustainable renewable energies. More rigid government regulations and full or partial tax exemption are established to promote the utilization of sustainable fuels and biodiesel is one of the most interesting things from an environmental point of view. However it is necessary to solve the major obstacle in its commercialization, its current high cost of manufacturing. The cost of the oil feedstocks (food-grade oils) and the complexity of the conventional production processes escalate the overall biodiesel production costs and it is the major reason for its non-competitiveness when compared with diesel fossil fuels. INNOVCAT developed a new sustainable solution to transform wastes (oils and fats) into biodiesel. The catalvalor project combines an innovative Catalyst (X-CAT) and technology to produce biodiesel from wastes. Our catalyst is solid and prepared from a renewable source, is non-toxic, non-corrosive and when combined with a simplified process allows the transformation of a wide variety of waste feedstocks (from 1-100 % FFA content) into high quality biodiesel without loss of activity and with a superior efficiency avoiding complex pre-treatment steps, complicated separation, purification steps and generation of large amount of waste water stream. This is an outstanding solution to solve the problems of non-competitiveness of biodiesel and unique in the market that offers to biodiesel producers the possibility to reduce the operation costs (reduction in feedstock costs) and also reduction in the equipment process costs since it avoids all the complicated steps associated to biodiesel production processes.
Email: andreia.peixoto@fc.up.pt