By 2030, the world’s population is expected to reach 8 billion, and as the population grows, more energy is required to produce the basic needs of people. New sources of energy are needed, an energy that is more practical to use in the same way that it is safer, renewable, available and of course affordable. Renewable energy resources can be classified as; solar energy, wind energy, water power (hydropower, geothermal energy, wave energy), biomass energy and hydrogen energy. From these resources, biomass is a renewable, environmentally friendly strategic energy resource, which can be produced every where and has influence on socio-economic development, and also can be a resource for electricity and transportation fuels production. From the biomass energy technologies, biodiesel is one of the candidates of this needed energy because of its abundance and potential source in the country. Biodiesel is a clean-burning diesel replacement fuel that can be used in compression-ignition engines, and which is manufactured from virgin vegetable oils, animal fats, algaes, and waste cooking oils through the process of transesterification reaction. For industrial-scale biodiesel production around the world, canola oil, sunflower oil, soybean oil and used cooking oil are used as an oil feedstock, methanol is used as an alcohol and alkaline catalysts (sodium or potassium hydroxide) are used as catalyst choices. In this project, the biodiesel transesterification production process in large-scale of a plant with an annual production of 8.000 tonnes of this biofuel was studied, using canola oil, methanol and sodium hydroxide as the main substances. The flowsheet of the process was designed and the mass balance was done. Once this step was finished, the economical assessment of two plants with the same characteristics as the one designed, one in Spain and the other one in Turkey, was carried out. Results showed that in both countries a solution is needed in order to make the process profitable: cheaper feedstocks, new technologies, or new policies, incentives, subsidies or tariffs from the government.

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