Tuesday, May 1, 2012
Napoleon Ballroom C-D, 3rd fl (Sheraton New Orleans)
Due to the present high demand for biodiesel, the glycerol availability has increased while its market price decreased substantially. That means that it can be a suitable feedstock as much for the chemical industries as for the biofuels production. The glycerol pyrolysis is a promising way to produce biofuels such as hydrogen and syngas (feedstock used in synthetic fuels production via Fisher-Tropsch reaction) and could be a suitable via to add value to this by-product from biodiesel and at same time avoiding its accumulation in the environment. Such as other pyrolysis processes, syngas production from glycerol pyrolysis depends on different process conditions and process technologies. Bearing this in mind, the aim of this work is estimate the kinetic parameters and, propose and simulate the process of syngas production from glycerol pyrolysis by using Aspen PlusTM. The Arrhenius kinetic parameters were estimated using the Genetic Algorithm optimization technique and was supported by data obtained from experiments performed in a fixed bed reactor, which used aluminum oxide as catalyst in temperature ranging from 700ºC to 900ºC. The process parameters as well as syngas composition were evaluated. It was found that the simulation process is a helpful tool to evaluate important process parameters such as: energy demand, different feedstock quality effect on conversion and products quality, minimum utility required optimization of desirable compounds (Syngas and H2) and process integration.