TY - JOUR AB - Biodiesel is one of the most prominent biofuels in the market, recent trends indicate a worldwide production growth to replace crude-based diesel as transportation fuel. In this work, two reactive distillation processes with their corresponding downstream separation units are simulated: the first involves alkali whereas the second includes heterogeneous catalyst. The processes yield a high purity biodiesel product. Aspen Plus v8.4 was used as the process simulation tool in the present work. Comparison between the two production processes were made in terms of the annual production costs and economic indicators such as Return-On-Investment (ROI) and payback period. The simulation results show that the heterogeneous-catalyzed process is more economically advantageous than the alkalicatalyzed process for biodiesel production due to a much higher ROI, lower payback period, and lower annual cost per unit of biodiesel produced. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier AD - Petr Inst, Dept Chem Engn, Abu Dhabi, U Arab Emirates AN - WOS:000361030000004 AU - Poddar, T. AU - Jagannath, A. AU - Almansoori, A. DO - 10.1016/j.egypro.2015.07.129 J2 - Enrgy Proced KW - biodiesel LA - English N1 - Bd4sh PY - 2015 SN - 1876-6102 SP - 17-22 ST - Biodiesel Production using Reactive Distillation: A Comparative Simulation Study T2 - Clean, Efficient and Affordable Energy for a Sustainable Future TI - Biodiesel Production using Reactive Distillation: A Comparative Simulation Study UR - ://WOS:000361030000004 VL - 75 ID - 11716 ER -