Industrial production of biodiesel in the United States is a rapidly growing industry. At Bioproducts and Biosystems Engineering Department of University of Minnesota, we have a senior Capstone design project that is aimed at promoting the practice and application of fundamental concepts of biobased products engineering; learning of engineering design processes, modern design tools and skills; and practice of team work ethics, efficient communication and leaderships. The capstone design project at BBE on spring semester 2007 is to design a biodiesel plant using soybean as feedstock. The project is divided into three phases. On the first phase the instructor introduce the process concept design, product and process design principles to the student. The student does literature review that involves market analysis, process diagram and feedstock availability. The second phase involves process diagram development using process simulation, HySYS in this case, and detail cost benefit analysis which contains raw material cost, operation cost et. al.. At the final stage of the project, students prepare project report, a 15 minutes presentation before students and faculty members, and poster.

In this presentation, we will introduce the student design project for a 40 million gallons per year biodiesel plant, which includes the proposed process diagram, key stream components, and estimated production cost for the proposed biodiesel production facility.