Journal
KOREAN JOURNAL OF CHEMICAL ENGINEERING
Volume 29, Issue 12, Pages 1708-1712Publisher
KOREAN INSTITUTE CHEMICAL ENGINEERS
DOI: 10.1007/s11814-012-0047-7
Keywords
Biodiesel; Waste Cooking Palm Oil; Heterogeneous Catalysis; Fixed Bed Reactor
Funding
- Silpakorn University Research and Development Institute [SURDI 52/02/06.01-53/02/04.01]
- Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Faculty of Engineering and Industrial Technology, Silpakorn University
- National Center of Excellence for Petroleum, Petrochemicals and Advanced Materials, Chulalongkorn University
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A reactor has been developed to produce high quality fatty acid methyl esters (FAME) from waste cooking palm oil (WCO). Continuous transesterification of free fatty acids (FFA) from acidified oil with methanol was carried out using a calcium oxide supported on activated carbon (CaO/AC) as a heterogeneous solid-base catalyst. CaO/AC was prepared according to the conventional incipient-wetness impregnation of aqueous solutions of calcium nitrate (Ca(NO3)(2)center dot 4H(2)O) precursors on an activated carbon support from palm shell in a fixed bed reactor with an external diameter of 60 mm and a height of 345 mm. Methanol/oil molar ratio, feed flow rate, catalyst bed height and reaction temperature were evaluated to obtain optimum reaction conditions. The results showed that the FFA conversion increased with increases in alcohol/oil molar ratio, catalyst bed height and temperature, whereas decreased with flow rate and initial water content in feedstock increase. The yield of FAME achieved 94% at the reaction temperature 60 A degrees C, methanol/oil molar ratio of 25: 1 and residence time of 8 h. The physical and chemical properties of the produced methyl ester were determined and compared with the standard specifications. The characteristics of the product under the optimum condition were within the ASTM standard. High quality waste cooking palm oil methyl ester was produced by combination of heterogeneous alkali transesterification and separation processes in a fixed bed reactor. In sum, activated carbon shows potential for transesterification of FFA.
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