Continuous Methanolysis of Palm Oil Using a Liquid–Liquid Film Reactor

Process enhancement of supercritical methanol biodiesel production by packing beds

Continuous fixed bed reactors filled by three kinds of packing which were glass bead, glass spring and Dixon rings were investigated. The effect of temperature, pressure, the molar ratio of methanol to oil, flow rate, the size and shape of the packing were researched. The highest yield 90.84% of FAME was obtained by filling Dixon rings as packing with the condition of the temperature was 350°C, the pressure was 22MPa, the molar ratio of methanol to oil was 42:1. In addition, the reusability of Dixon rings was perfect. Numerical simulation was researched to provide theoretical basis for experimental results, besides the kinetics and thermodynamics behavior were investigated to explore the reaction mechanism.

Transesterification of waste vegetable oil under pulse sonication using ethanol, methanol and ethanol-methanol mixtures

This study reports on the effects of direct pulse sonication and the type of alcohol (methanol and ethanol) on the transesterification reaction of waste vegetable oil without any external heating or mechanical mixing. Biodiesel yields and optimum process conditions for the transesterification reaction involving ethanol, methanol, and ethanol-methanol mixtures were evaluated. The effects of ultrasonic power densities (by varying sample volumes), power output rates (in W), and ultrasonic intensities (by varying the reactor size) were studied for transesterification reaction with ethanol, methanol and ethanol-methanol (50%-50%) mixtures. The optimum process conditions for ethanol or methanol based transesterification reaction of waste vegetable oil were determined as: 9:1 alcohol to oil ratio, 1% wt. catalyst amount, 1-2 min reaction time at a power output rate between 75 and 150 W. It was shown that the transesterification reactions using ethanol-methanol mixtures resulted in biodiesel yields as high as >99% at lower power density and ultrasound intensity when compared to ethanol or methanol based transesterification reactions.

Continuous-flow biodiesel production using slit-channel reactors

Slit-channel reactors are reactors whose active surface areas are orders of magnitude higher than those of micro-reactors but have low fabrication costs relative to micro-reactors. We successfully produced biodiesel with different degrees of conversion using homogeneous catalyst in the slit-channel reactor. The reactor performance shows that percent conversion of soybean oil to biodiesel increases with channel depth, as expected, due to more efficient mixing. Shallow slit-channels require short average residence times for complete product conversion. Present results show that the slit-channel reactor provides an improved performance over traditional batch reactors using homogeneous sodium alkoxide catalyst. It is aimed to couple the reactors with solid catalysts in converting soybean oil to biodiesel and implementation method is suggested. The cost advantages resulting from the ease of fabrication of slit-channel reactors over micro-reactors and how these factors relate to the oil conversion efficiency to biodiesel are briefly noted and discussed.