Biodiesel Production from High Acidified Oil Through Solid Acid Catalyst and Plug Flow Reactor

Abstract

A pilot scale of 200 t/year biodiesel production system was setup to test the different feedstock oil for their feasibility of being biodiesel feedstock in China. The tested oil include: rapeseed oil, Chinese wood oil, trap grease. Meanwhile the optimum operating conditions for a plug flow reactor to convert transesterification reaction was investigated in this study. They were found to be as follows: the catalyst dosage is 1.2 wt%; the residence time is about 17min; the bed temperature is 65 °C ; the oil/methanol ratio is 1:6; the content of methyl ester is 96.33% under these conditions. A kind of an ion exchange resin filled in the fixed bed reactor was used as the esterification catalyst for the pretreating of high-acidified oil. The acid value of the oil could be reduced from 7 to 0.8 mgKOH·g-1 after 88 min. Also a kind of acidified oil with the acid value being 114 mg KOH·g-1 could be equally converted to a good biodiesel product through this system. Generally, the refined biodiesel product generated through this system could meet China #0 biodiesel standard, as well as Germany biodiesel standard for most indexes. It indicates that the designed process in this system has a good adaptability for different kinds of oil. KeywordsSolid Acid CatalystCold Filter Plug PointPlug Flow ReactorTrap GreaseHigh Solidification PointThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.