Microreactor x millireactor: Experimental performance in the epoxidation of soybean oil

Abstract

In the Chemical Reaction Engineering (CRE) field, the concept of Process Intensification (PI) can be applied using microreactors and millireactors, i.e., tubular reaction devices with reduced dimensions, compared with typical reactors used industrially. This concept was explored in the present study by the conduction of the reaction system for the epoxidation of soybean oil without catalysts and droplet stabilizers. The biphasic reaction system generates the epoxidized soybean oil (ESO), a promising compound in the plasticizers field that follows Green Chemistry principles. Besides the effect of the equipment itself (microreactor or millireactor), the effects of the temperature and the mean residence time were also explored in this study. The results confirmed the intensification of the epoxidation process, particularly in the microreactor, due to the strong dependence of the reactions on mass and heat transfer effects. This led to significantly lower reaction times, in the order of minutes, comparatively to the typical reaction times of hours employed in industrial batch and fed-batch reactors, with the achievement of the most promising results of 19.77 g I2/100 g for the iodine index and 5.67 g O/100 g for the oxirane index, values corresponding to 84.2% of double bond conversion and 74.9% of epoxy yield.