Sunday, May 4, 2008
4-48

Fast biodiesel production by one-phase reaction

Ji-Yeon Park1, Deog-Keun Kim1, Zhong-Ming Wang2, and Jin-Suk Lee1. (1) Bioenergy Research Center, Korea Institute of Energy Research, 71-2, Jang-dong, Yuseong-gu, Daejeon, 305-343, South Korea, (2) Biomass Energy Center, Guangzhou Institute of Energy Conversion, No.2 Nengyuan Rd, Wushan, Tianhe, Guangzhou, 510640, China

Due to high oil price and Kyoto protocol, biodiesel became a fast growing market during the last years. To save the operation time and cost for biodiesel production, some fast biodiesel production processes have been suggested. Because oil is immiscible with methanol in the transesterification reaction, the contact of oil with methanol and catalyst is an important factor. Some researchers used a co-solvent such as tetrahydrofuran to enhance the mass transfer of oil and methanol. In this study, the feasibility of fatty acid methyl ester (FAME) as the co-solvent to increase the mass transfer was investigated. FAME as the co-solvent does not require its additional separation because FAME is the end product of the processes. To examine the intermediate phenomena of the reaction, the mixing speed was controlled at a slow rate. When the molar ratio of methanol to oil was , oil existed at the bottom and methanol and catalyst existed at the top. The top layer gradually became dark by the production of FAME and glycerol. After few minutes, the methanol layer fell down and began to be mixed with oil. When FAME was 5% of oil, FAME content increased more rapidly than the case without FAME addition. However, when FAME was 10% of oil, initial FAME content increased rapidly but final FAME content was lowered due to the reversible reaction by high concentration of FAME.

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