Design of a control system for a small-scale biofuel production from Jatropha curcas l. using microwave-assisted extraction

• Main Authors: Gliane, Maria Camille D. V., Ng, Julius Ramje S., To, Mark Ryan S., Manzano, Enrique M.
• Format: text
• Published: Animo Repository 2010
• Subjects: Biomass energy; Jatropha curcas; Energy crops; Microwave pressing; Biochemical and Biomolecular Engineering; Bioresource and Agricultural Engineering
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/faculty_research/13663
• Institution: De La Salle University

The world of biodiesel industry has continually sought for "out of the box" solutions to the ever-growing demand for alternative fuels. The Philippines who take part in this search has invested research in the use of expellers to extract biodiesel from Jatropha seeds. Research has already been done and has proved that MAE or microwave-assisted extraction can extract at a higher efficiency than expellers. To keep up with the pace of continuous research, this study has shown the possible use of automation to industrialize the extraction from Jatropha seeds by means of MAE. A microcontroller application board was used to act as the heart of the system which stores the program and controls the other devices. Altogether, the incorporation of relays, solenoids, and a thermocouple made possible the automation of the manual MAE process of extraction. The prototype was able to obtain an extraction efficiency of 80.14%