Abstract
An innovative integrated process of ethanol dehydration and ethylic biodiesel production based on absorption and reactive distillation processes was demonstrated by experimental validated simulation and optimization using Aspen Plus® and Statistica® software, respectively. Glycerol, a byproduct of the transesterification of triacylglycerols, was adopted as solvent for ethanol purification. Experimental and simulated results of the absorption process step were compared and showed no significant difference from t-test with 95% of confidence level. The optimal conditions of the processes were obtained using a multivariate analysis. For the absorption process, the optimized parameters were solvent feed stream temperature, T = 27 °C; number of stages, N = 6; and solvent-to-feed ratio, S/F = 1.5, 1.4 and 1.0 for ethanol mass fractions on feed stream of 0.8800, 0.9380 and 0.9910. The optimal parameters of the reactive distillation column (RDC) for biodiesel production were ethanol-to-oil molar ratio, MR = 12; N = 6; total reflux ratio; and residence time to number of stages ratio, t/N = 8 min/stage. The integrated process produced anhydrous ethanol with mass purity above 99.9%, oil conversion (Xoil) above 99%, and biodiesel yield of 98%. Moreover, Xoil > 96.5% was also obtained for a lower value of MR = 7 adopting t/N = 8 min/stage. Finally, the integrated process proved to be a potential economically attractive technology for ethylic biodiesel production, since reactive distillation and absorption columns were coupled based on the concept of process intensification.
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