The control system for the production of biodiesel

Abstract

This article describes the control unit for the production of biodiesel from waste material, such as fats or oils. The control system is based on programmable logic controller of PCD2 family and provides dosing of feedstock materials (fat or oil) and other material, temperature reactor control, visualization of process and progress of production. It provides easy setting of the parameters of the technological process - transesterification. It was proposed to use in laboratory or small industrial production. There can be connected touch screen terminal to the control unit or the user can use local area network for the connection with computer with web browser to control the production process. The process of desalting is proposing for the preparation of waste materials (fats from leather industry, it's based on ARM microcontroller from Cortex-M4 family with touch screen LCD (10.4).