Emerging safety issues for biodiesel production plant

Biodiesel is a very attractive bio-fuel because of its environmental benefits. Indeed, it has lower content of air pollutants per net energy than diesel; it is nontoxic and can be produced from renewable sources with high energetic efficiency. Quite clearly, despite biodiesel status as a safe substance, the production process can be dangerous as methanol and other flammable reactants such as sodium methylate can leave plants vulnerable to fire and explosion if not properly engineered and operated. But further issues are emerging for the increasing capacity of plants, which have driven up on-site volumes of highly hazardous chemicals, thus resulting in higher risks for the scale-up. In this paper, insights of risks within this fairly new industry are presented.