Jurnal Teknos-2k Vol. 15, No. 2, Juli 2015 © Fakultas Teknologi Industri Universitas Bung Hatta 33 Design of a Small Scale Biofuels Plant for Internal Combustion Engine Abdullah Mustafa Hamid, Zulkarnain Abdul Latiff * , Azhar Abdul Aziz, Mohd Rozi Mohd Perang Automotive Development Centre, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 81310 Johor Bahru, Malaysia Phone : +60 755 34758, Fax: +60 755 66159 E-mail: zkarnain@fkm.utm.my Abstract The concern of finding an alternative fuel to replace the gasoline is demanding due to the price increment and environmental aspects. Choosing the alternative fuel became a controversial subject since many considerations, methods, cost and continuous improvement are essential. Three well known processes in production of ethanol are; pre-treatment, fermentation and post-treatment. The design of a portable bio-fuels plant will be presented with all the design equations and selected materials. Considering scaling down the plant requires conceptualizing the procedures and integration the units since the plant is meant to fit in a truck or mobile platform. Integration of units raises the need for knowing that some of processes will be merged to a single unit. The overall dimensions are 6 m by 3 m in term of length and width respectively. The plant contains three storage tanks, two fermentation reactors where the integration of units takes place pervaporation and pure ethanol tank. All the dimensions will be provided as each part will be elaborated. Keyword: bio-fuels, portable plant, biomass, renewable energy. 1. Introduction The world can be simulated as a device that is run by crude oil. Without it enormous chaos will occur since no vehicle or machine can run without it. Since scientists are arguing that crude oil is a finite liquid. There was a need to look for an alternative fuel that can run relatively as crude oil. Moreover, a voice of environmental concern is dramatically rising since the global warming is taking a place. So, environmental and economical factors gathered to enhance the necessity of finding a substitutional fuel. Ethanol is an alcoholic fuel, one of the most important renewable fuels because of its contribution to the reduction of negative environmental emission generated by worldwide utilization of fossil fuel. Ethanol (CH 3 CH 2 OH) is considered a common high alcohol since it’s a first generation biofuel routes and it became an interested fuel when it was found that it can run an internal combustion engines (Pfromm et al., 2010). Antoine Lavoisier described ethanol as a compound of carbon, hydrogen, and