Heterogeneously catalyzed free fatty acid esterification in (monophasic liquid)/solid packed bed reactors (PBR)
Articolo
Data di Pubblicazione:
2014
Citazione:
Heterogeneously catalyzed free fatty acid esterification in (monophasic liquid)/solid packed bed reactors (PBR) / C. Pirola, F. Manenti, F. Galli, C.L. Bianchi, D.C. Boffito, M. Corbetta. - In: CHEMICAL ENGINEERING TRANSACTIONS. - ISSN 2283-9216. - 37(2014), pp. 553-558. ((Intervento presentato al 1. convegno International congress on biomass tenutosi a Firenze nel 2014 [10.3303/CET1437093].
Abstract:
Biofuels are key products for the sustainability of the world energy consumption in the next years.
Biodiesel in particular is a non-toxic, biodegradable, environmentally friendly alternative diesel fuel.
Nowadays, the main problem for the commercialization of biodiesel is its final cost, that is strongly
dependent (about 85 % of the total) by the feedstock used. A possible way to lower the biodiesel
production costs is using raw oils, which contain a higher amount of Free Fatty Acids (FFA) that should be
eliminated before the transesterification reaction to avoid soaps formation. In this work the deacidification
of raw sunflower oil in both batch and PBR reactor was conducted. Heterogeneous catalyst Amberlyst 46
was used in its dry form and all the experiments were executed using an amount of methanol higher than
the stoichiometric but preserving the mono-phasic liquid phase. Different operative conditions, i.e. different
methanol/FFA ratios and temperatures in both the reactor configurations, were tested. The robust
techniques for kinetic parameters estimation and simultaneous discrimination of rival models were adopted
and combined with a dedicated differential-algebraic equation (DAE) model that characterizes the PBR
reactor. The main kinetic parameters were regressed using kinetic models other than literature models (a
pseudo-homogeneous and an adsorption based one) in considering the components molar fractions (ideal
system). The kinetic parameters were obtained using equilibrated resins, i.e. using the catalyst after
having let it to adsorb reactants and products at the operative conditions. From the regression results, it
could be concluded that the pseudo-homogeneous model is slightly better for fitting the experimental data
Tipologia IRIS:
01 - Articolo su periodico
Elenco autori:
C. Pirola, F. Manenti, F. Galli, C.L. Bianchi, D.C. Boffito, M. Corbetta
Link alla scheda completa: