Abstract
Biodiesel production is gaining more and more relevance due to its environmental advantages and because of the world situation of petroleum: decreases of reserves, augmentation of prices etc. Biodiesel is produced by transesterification of triglycerides; however, it can also be generated by the esterification of fatty acid, normally considered as an impurity. The evolution of the reaction when using oleic acid (diluted in triglycerides) and ethanol, in the presence of a heterogeneous catalyst, has been studied. Kinetics expression for the esterification reaction as well as for the esterification and transesterification taking place simultaneously have been developed and fit with the experimental data. It is shown that, when both reactions are being taking into account, the kinetics fits the experimental data better since it does consider the interaction between all the compounds involved. The kinetics expression obtained represented satisfactorily the experimental information for several operations conditions. Copyright , Oxford University Press.
Highlights
Petroleum fuel consumption has increased considerably over the last year due to the increase in the population and in the energy requirements
The reaction kinetics of the direct esterification has been studied in the presence of triglycerides and ethanol for a heterogeneous solid catalyst
We studied the esterification reaction while the transesterification was considered to have no influence
Summary
Petroleum fuel consumption has increased considerably over the last year due to the increase in the population and in the energy requirements. Different feedstocks (waste, acid and frying oils) are being evaluated as possible substitutes. These alternative raw materials are less expensive; they present higher amounts of different impurities. Its concentration varies from 3 to 80% depending on whether it is an acid oil, frying oil or a soapstock, where the amount of FFAs could be close to 100% [22] For those cases, where the amount of FFAs in the feedstock exceeds 0.5%, the use of the conventional alkali catalyst is not recommended due to the fact that soap will be produced due to the interaction of fatty acids and homogeneous basic catalyst [2– 4]. The main reactions involved when acid oil is employed are summarized as follows: CH2 À OOC À R1 j
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