Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Emerging Trends in Energy Conservation - ETEC Tehran, Tehran, Iran, 20-21 November 2011 1 Novel Modeling Techniques for Monitoring Biodiesel Production Processes Hassan Ghorbani 1 , Ali M.Nikbakht 2* , Meisam Tabatabaei 3 , Mahdi Hosseini 1 , Poya Mohammadi 1 1 M.S Student and 2 Assistant Professor of Agricultural Engineering, Urmia University, Iran. P.O Box: 165. 3 Agricultural Biotechnology Research Institute of Iran (ABRII). H.ghorbani83@yahoo.com * Corresponding author: a.nikbakht@urmia.ac.ir Tel: +98 912 638 9682 P.O Box: 165 ABSTRACT Biodiesel has been a mater of importance in recent years. Environmental challenges have been key factors to justify the necessity of a renewable clean fuel. On the other hand, the production and utilization of biodiesel in a proper state is of concern regarding the numerous plants and industries engaged with the biodiesel. Economical production of biodiesel requires uncovering the process and optimization of the parameters. New methodologies have emerged to satisfy this purpose. In this paper, several features related to the industrial production of biodiesel are discussed. However, modern trends to model the process together with their scope and range of application have been detailed. KEYWORDS: biodiesel, optimization, modelling, artificial neural networks 1 INTRODUCTION Global air pollution is a serious threat which has been caused by excessive use of fossil fuels for transportation. At present, biodiesel is the most promising source of renewable energy with high potential to replace petroleum-derived diesel fuel, owing to similarity in physico-chemical properties between them [2]. Also due to the highly analogous properties of diesel and biodiesel, biodiesel can be utilized with minor modifications on diesel engines. [3]. Biodiesel, known as non-toxic, environmental friendly (leading to lower CO2, CO, NOX emission levels compared to commercial diesel), has found to be advantageous of being potentially renewable source of energy which benefits from facilitated storing and transportation. However, it has the disadvantages of 1) high production cost, 2) reduced cold flow properties, 3) detergent characteristics in fuel tank, 4) high viscosity and 5) low volatility [4]. It can be seen that the fuel properties of biodiesel play a major role in the combustion process. Since the nature of fuel components determines fuel properties, the precise information on the structure of the fuel seems necessary [6]. This highlights the importance of developing suitable models in order to cover an exact view of the phenomena and sequences occurred when biodiesel is used as a blend. On the other hand, in various applications, optimization of relevant parameters in transestrification reaction and biodiesel fuel properties by laboratory tests are time consuming and costly [1]. The main objective of this study is the investigation of various models for prediction and optimization of biodiesel production process as well as considering the pros and cons for each. Moreover, the integrated models and best to suggest ones are discussed. 2 MODELING TECHNIQUES IN THE PRODUCTION OF BIODIESEL Modeling in biodiesel is generally carried out with two different approaches; first, modeling biodiesel production process, simulation of transestrification reaction under variable amount of raw materials and catalysts and also reaction conditions. The second approach includes modeling the biodiesel