Kinetic Behavior of Biodiesel Production with Supercritical Methanol

• Main Authors: Yu-Ting Tsai, 蔡雨廷
• Other Authors: Ming-Jer Lee
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2011
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/92eg2n

博士 === 國立臺灣科技大學 === 化學工程系 === 99 === The kinetic behavior of biodiesel production from non-catalytic transesterification and esterification with a continuous supercritical process was investigated in this study. In transesterification reaction, the biodiesel was produced from refined sunflower oil and methanol in the presence of carbon dioxide at the conditions of (the molar ratios of methanol to triglyceride) from 20 to 60 and (the molar ratio of CO2 to methanol ) = 0.1, temperatures from 553 K to 593 K, and pressures from 100 bar to 250 bar. The reaction rate and FAME yield increase with increasing reaction temperature and those appear to be insensitive to pressure. The FAME yield increases with , but it reaches a constant as greater than 25. It is also found that the FAME yield decreases with the addition of carbon dioxide due to the dilution effect. In esterification reaction, the biodiesel was synthesized from the oleic acid and methanol. The experimental runs were conducted at (the molar ratios of methanol to oleic acid) from 2 to 5, temperatures from 493 K to 533 K, and under 100 bar. The conversion of oleic acid increases with increasing reaction temperature and feed molar ratio of . The reaction rate was significantly enhanced as the esterification was conducted at the supercritical condition of methanol. The kinetic data of both transesterification and esterification were correlated with power law models to determine the kinetic parameters. The correlated results show that the models represent well the kinetic behavior of the transesterification and the esterification reactions for biodiesel production.