An Experimental Analysis of Lactic Acid Esterification Process Using Langmuir-Hinshelwood Model

Abstract

In this study, esterification of lactic acid and ethanol to produce ethyl lactate using different cation-exchange resin catalysts was performed at 100 °C. The catalysts used for the esterification process were amberlyst 16 and dowex 50W8x cation-exchange resins. Two simplified mechanisms based on Langmuir-Hinshelwood model were employed to describe the components that adsorbed most on the surface of the catalysts. Fourier Transform Infrared (Nicolet iS10 FTIR) was employed to verify the rationality of the mechanisms. FTIR of the esterification product reflected C=O, H=O and C=C bonds on the spectra confirming water and ethanol as the most adsorbed components. The kinetic study of the retention time and the peak areas of the esterification produced with the different catalysts were compared using an autosampler gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (autosampler GC-MS). The chromatogram of the esterification product catalysed by amberlyst 16 showed a faster elution at 1.503 mins with the peak area of 1229816403 m2 in contrast to the dowex 50W8x. The BET surface area and BJH pore size distribution of the resin catalysts were determined using liquid nitrogen adsorption (Quantachrome, 2013) at 77 K. The BET surface area results of amberlyst 16 resin catalysts was found to be 1.659m2/g compared to 0.1m2/g for the dowex 50W8x. The BJH results of the catalysts exhibited a type IV isotherm with hysteresis confirming that the materials were mesoporous with pore size in the region of 2 – 50 nm.