Production of a biodiesel additive in a stirred basket reactor using immobilized lipase: Kinetic and mass transfer analysis

Abstract

−A laboratory-scale stirred basket reactor (SBR) was constructed to study the synthesis of an n-butyl oleate ester using Novozym 435. An ester yield of approximately 98% was obtained after 6 h using an equimolar substrate ratio, 3.5 g of enzyme, a reaction temperature of 40 °C, and an impeller speed of 200 rpm. The kinetic data were modeled as a ping-pong bi-bi mechanism using a non-linear regression technique. Statistical analysis of the results showed that a model that incorporated the inhibitory effect of n-butanol yielded the best fit with the following parameters: Vmax=24.8mmol L−1 min−1, Km, oleic acid=190.8mM, Km, n-butanol=544.7 mM, and Ki, n-butanol=158.3mM. Mass transfer effects on the enzyme kinetics were also studied, and the absence of internal and external diffusion limitations on the reaction in the SBR was confirmed by considering calculated values of the Thiele modulus and the Damkohler number. Novozym 435 exhibited satisfactory performance in repeated-batch experiments using SBR.