Biodiesel Process Intensification by Using Static Mixers Tubular Reactors

Abstract

Biodiesel is usually produced by reacting triglycerides, contained in vegetable oils, with methanol in the presence of KOH, NaOH, or related alkoxides as catalysts. In industry, the reaction is performed in stirred tank reactors and requires 1–2 h of reaction time being the reaction rate strongly affected by mass transfer limitation. We have recently shown, by using a Corrugated Plates Heat Exchanger Reactor, that a very high productivity (about 2 tons/day L) can be obtained by working at 60–100 °C thanks to the presence of an intense local “micromixing”. Moreover, we have recently tested the performances obtained in a tubular reactor filled with stainless steel spheres of different diameters. By opportunely changing the spheres diameters it is possible to obtain microchannels in a range of 300–1000 μm with an intense local micromixing. Again, thanks to micromixing we obtained very high productivities. However, in these last reactors the void portion of the reactor is low and the productivity per overall ...