Kinetics of Palm Oil Methanolysis

Abstract

AbstractA kinetics study of palm oil methanolysis was conducted at three different temperatures and three different concentrations of catalyst, sodium hydroxide, keeping constant the molar ratio of methanol to oil and the rotational speed of the impeller (6:1 and 400 rpm). The maximum conversion of palm oil and productivity to methyl esters were obtained at 60 °C and 1 wt% of NaOH based on palm oil, and they were 100 and 97.6%, respectively. The statistical analysis of conversions of palm oil and productivities to methyl esters as functions of temperature and concentration of catalyst, after 80 min of reaction, allowed them to fit second order polynomial equations, which adequately describe the experimental behavior. The experimental data appear to be a good fit into a second order kinetic model for the three stepwise reactions, and the reaction rate constants and the activation energies were determined. In this article we present the kinetic constant and activation energies for the experiments with 0.2% wt of NaOH. The effect of molar ratio on the concentration of products was investigated, while the temperature (55 °C), the concentration of catalyst (0.60 wt% of NaOH), and the rotational speed (400 rpm), were held constant. The results showed that the conversion and the productivity increased due to methanol excess, and were higher for the reactions with a molar ratio of 6:1.