Design and construction of an automated prototype pilot for bio-diesel's production in Colombia
Abstract
The purpose is to develop and to deploy some economically competitive technologies for Biodiesel's production in Colombia, involving the design and construction of a prototype as a technological development. After studying different material's characteristics, it was selected the austenitic steel ANSI 304. To the monitoring system and for the automatic variables control of (Temperature, time and speed) two microcontrollers PIC 18F452 were implemented, together with a microcontroller PIC 12F629, in configuration a master-two slaves. For the variables visualization a screen LCD PG128128 was used, with interface graph and configurable menu by applying a matrix keyboard. The device registers information of temperature and speed using the memory EEPROM reports of the master microcontroller to visualize them in graphics, with connection to a PC. Finally the prototype functioning was evaluated by the production and the African Palm’s bio-diesel quality analysis. The test consisted in the determination of the content of methyl esters in the samples that cameo ut of the production process, for which a gas chromatograph Varian 3400 was used. The results show conversions up of 86,23 % in average.
Keywords
bio-diesel, Ethanol, methanol, African Palm
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