by Brent Chrabas (Viesel Fuel LLC/Biodiesel Magazine) In collaboration with Tactical Fabrication of Dublin, Georgia, and Novozymes of Denmark, a novel biodiesel production technology developed by Viesel Skunk Works LLC will soon be offered commercially. The innovative system features a continuous flow enzymatic reaction process that also eliminates sulfur from biodiesel when low-grade feedstocks such as brown grease are used. Today, the dominant method of producing biodiesel is through batch reactions, which can be considered inferior due to lower productivity, larger variation in product quality, and more intensive labor and energy requirements.
The development of continuous reactors for biodiesel production using enzymatic catalyst has been discussed for a long time, yet there is no saleable biodiesel produced from commercial biodiesel plants with a continuous enzymatic reactor. Most importantly, reducing the sulfur to 15 ppm in biodiesel when the feedstock contains up to 10,000 ppm of sulfur compounds is currently one of the biggest technological challenges for biodiesel producers. READ MORE