Preliminary Plant Design of Biofuel from Algae in Balikpapan, East Kalimantan

Biodiesel is one of the promising alternative energy to replace fossil fuel which is produced from natural resources that contains lipid or oil. Common sources of biodiesel are lately growing controversy about the use of potential food sources for the production of fuel. One of the strongest non-food alternative for biodiesel source is algae since it can produce considerable amount of lipid based on their species and cultivation condition. One of the suitable species that can be used is Botryococcus braunii because of its ability to accumulate high amount of lipid and hydrocarbons extracellularly. All process simulations are done by using SuperPro Designer v9.0. The objective of this algae-based biodiesel preliminary plant design is to provide technological reviews, economical assessments, and HSE assessments of this plant. Based on supply consideration and process area needed, the best location for this plant is in Kariangau, Balikpapan, East Kalimantan with the estimated land area of 7,700 m². The value of IRR and ROI of this plant is found to be 17.39% and 16.9% respectively. The NPV of this plant is 2,902,358.32 USD. It can be concluded from the profitability analysis that this algae-based biodiesel plant with capacity of 3,000 ton of biodiesel per year is economically feasible with payback period of 5.91 years.