Chakrit Tongurai

Feasibility Study of Reactive Distillation Column for Transesterification of Palm Oils

The production of biodiesel by transesterification in existing processes requires excess alcohol, typically 100%, over its stoichiometric requirement in order to drive the chemical reaction to complete. This excess alcohol must be recovered and purified for reusing by rectification and distillation, which involves additional capital and operating costs. Therefore, combination of reactor and distillation column in only one unit called reactive distillation column (RD) may lead to an enormous capital-investment cost reduction. This research is proposed the feasibility study of biodiesel production from palm oil by transesterification using reactive distillation. The hypothesis is to reduce the amount of alcohol in the feed stream closing to its stoichiometric ratio with oil. This dues to the less energy used in the methanol recovery for the processes. The effects of process parameters were conducted by lab scale RD packed column. The results indicated that process parameters of 900 ml/hr flow rate, reboiler temperature 90C with 4.0:1 molar ratio of methanol to oil and residence time of 5 minutes in the column produced 92.75 percent biodiesel purity.

Sterilization of oil palm fresh fruit using microwave technique.

Dramatically increasing rate of free fatty acid (FFA) in long storage oil palm fruit is one of the most crucial problems of oil palm mill industries. The aim of this paper is to study the possibility of oil palm fruits sterilization by using microwave irradiation in order of halting enzymatic lipolysis reaction which caused of FFA production. The results indicate that microwave heating can be interrupted the FFA produced reaction and the optimum condition heating temperature of the fruits mesocarp is 50 ° C but not exceed to 80 ° C, and the fruits can be storage for 7 days at ambient condition without FFA significantly generation. Conclude that heating from irradiation of microwave is capacitating for dry and clean sterilization system.

Transesterification of Triolein with Methanol in Reactive Distillation Column: Simulation Studies

Biodiesel is one of the most famous alternative petroleum diesel fuels. It is a clean fuel that causes less pollution than petroleum diesel does. To produce biodiesel by the conventional process, a biodiesel plant requires at least a reactor and a distillation column. Therefore, this work focuses on a feasibility study of using reactive distillation (RD), the combination of a reactor with a distillation column in one unit, to produce biodiesel from palm oil. The hypothesis of using RD is to reduce the amount of excess alcohol in the feed stream bringing its stoichiometric ratio close to that of oil. That causes less energy to be required for the methanol recovery process. Aspen Plus 2006 has been used to simulate this process. The kinetic constants of the conventional process need to be modified for the RD process. The preliminary results show a 4:1 molar ratio of methanol to oil, and the reboiler temperature at 150°C produces a 97.36 %(wt) methyl ester in 5.6 minutes. It can be concluded that using the RD process is more efficient and more feasible than using the conventional process to produce biodiesel from palm oil.

Effect of pH, OLR, and HRT on performance of acidogenic and methanogenic reactors for treatment of biodiesel wastewater

AbstractTwo-stage anaerobic process was studied in order to treat biodiesel wastewater. The first stage represented acidogenic reactor while the second stage was methanogenic reactor. The effect of pH, hydraulic retention time (HRT), and organic loading rate (OLR) on performance of both reactors was investigated. The optimum condition was examined using response surface methodology with the Box–Behnken Design. In the acidogenic reactor, the optimum pH, HRT, and OLR were 6.48, 16 h, and 26 g COD/(l d), respectively. High VFA production of 9.35 g/l was achieved with the low methane production. In the methanogenic reactor, the optimum pH, HRT, and OLR were 6.95, 30 h, and 6 g COD/(l d), respectively. Biogas production of 19.1 l/d was obtained with the methane content of 66%. VFA was completely consumed. In comparison, the two-stage system showed higher efficiency (COD removal, biogas production, and methane yield) than the one-stage system.

Developmental Evidence of Male and Female Gametophytes of Biodiesel Jatropha curcas L.: Pollen Capability and Stigma Receptivity

To evaluate an efficient protocol for the micropropagation of Tupistra albiflora K. Larsen, the effects of N6-benzylaminopurine (BA) and naphthalene acetic acid (NAA) concentrations on multiple shoot and root induction were examined. In vitro shoots were used as the explant materials which were cultured on Murashige and Skoog (MS) agar medium supplemented with 0, 1, 2, 3 and 4 mg/L BA for 4 weeks to induce multiple shoots. It was found that the MS medium containing 3 mg/L BA induced 100% shoot formation with the highest number of 3.2 shoots per explant (2.4-fold significantly higher than the control). For root induction, in vitro shoots were cultured on MS agar medium supplemented with 0, 1, 2, 3 and 4 mg/L NAA for 8 weeks. The results showed that the MS medium containing 1 mg/L NAA induced 100% root formation with the highest number of 6.6 roots per explant (1.8-fold significantly higher than the control).Diseases caused by phytoplasmas have been reported in field crops, ornamental and weeds in Indonesia. However, most of phytoplasmas have not been subjected to further identification and remain unaffiliated with proper classification scheme. More reliable identification of phytoplasmas mostly rely on molecular methods. The aim of this study was to characterize the phytoplasmaa as the causal agent of naturally infected plants in western Java-Indonesia based on their 16S rRNA nucleotide sequences. Plant exhibiting phytoplasmal symptoms were observed and taken for further molecular examination. Eight plant species from three families in Bogor, Tangerang and Bekasi, i.e. peanut, soybean, snakebean, Opuntia sp., betung bamboo, apus bamboo, Bermuda grass and digitaria grass ( Digitaria fuscescens ) have been observed and taken as samples for further molecular examination. Nested-PCR with primer pairs P1/P7 followed by R16F2n/R16R2 resulted in amplification of products of approximately 1.2 kb from all symptomatic plant samples tested. BLAST analysis of the nucleotide sequences, phylogenetic analyses and similarity coefficients derived from RFLP in silico revealed that there were association of a phytoplasma of 16SrII-A subgroup with phytoplasmas identified in peanut, soybean and snakebean showing witches’ broom symptoms; 16SrII-C with Opuntia sp. causing proliferation and mosaics; and phytoplasmas displaying yellowing and little leaf of two kinds of bamboos and white leaf of bermuda grass and digitaria grass were closely related to 16SrXIV-A subgroup. To our knowledge, this is the first report molecular identification of 16SrXIV-A associated with apus bamboo and digitaria grass in Indonesia.A marine bacterial isolated, Pectinatus cerevisiiphilus CT3, was able to grow and produce biosurfactant on minimal salts medium using glucose and NaNO 3 as a carbon and nitrogen sources. It was found that cellular growth and biosurfactant production in MSM were greatly affected by the medium components. After 54 h of cultivation, P. cerevisiiphilus CT3 was able to grow and produce surfactant reducing the surface tension of medium to 28.0 mN/m and giving biosurfactant concentration of 3.05 g/l with the critical micelle concentrations of 10 mg/l, respectively. The biosurfactant recovery by chloroform: methanol extraction showed pH and thermal stability with respect to surface tension reduction. It also showed emulsification activity and a high level of salt concentration. Furthermore, it revealed a promising antimicrobial activity against tested human pathogenic bacterial and fungal isolates. Based on these results, the isolated biosurfactant from the marine P. cerevisiiphilus CT3 revealed board physicochemical stabilities and possess excellent antimicrobial activities which proves its significance for possible use in various therapeutic and biomedical applications.

The Inhibiting Behavior of Glycerol on the Kinetics of Transesterification of Palm Oil

Glycerol, a by-product from transesterification, is well-known as one of the factors inhibiting the reaction. Previous works have mostly shown that the reaction rate slows to a near-steady state and eventually reaches chemical equilibrium. This work aimed to study the inhibiting behavior of glycerol on the transesterification of palm oil. Observation under an LCD digital microscopy showed that glycerol-coated droplets of catalyst-methanol dispersed in the triglyceride phase. This work proposes that glycerol inhibits transesterification by the following mechanism: Droplets of catalyst-methanol disperse into the triglyceride phase; the reaction takes place at an interphase called the reactive zone; methyl ester, the desired product, has low polarity and moves to the triglyceride phase, whereas glycerol, the non-desired product, is more highly polar and accumulates on the droplet surface of catalyst-methanol droplets, inhibiting triglyceride mass transfer and diluting the concentration of the catalyst-methanol. The triglyceride mass transfer coefficient and reaction rate constant were both investigated and expressed as the exponential function.

Design of microwave heating continuous belt system for palm fruit

This paper presents a design of microwave heating continuous belt system for palm fruit var. Tenera. Heating is aimed to deactivate the mechanism of lipase enzyme which produces Free Fatty Acids in the palm fruit. The design is simulated using Finite Element Method via COMSOLTM Multiphysics. The 3.2 kW heating system consists of four 800W magnetrons operating at 2.45 GHz. The electric field pattern in the multi-mode chamber cavity is solved to make it uniform and is applied to calculate the temperature distribution in the fruit. The uniform electric field in the cavity together with the temperature distribution of the palm fruit fed with continuous conveyor belt through the cavity was found to increase the excited microwave energy at an optimum heating time of 120 sec. This confirms a possibility of the design for heating palm fruit application.

Complex permittivity of fully ripe palm fruit from 1–30 MHz

This paper presents complex permittivity of each layer of fully ripe palm fruit var. Tenera at frequency from 1 to 30 MHz. The complex permittivity data of palm fruit which can be described in terms of dielectric constant and loss factor is very crucial to design a radio frequency (RF) system for heating palm fruit. From our measurement, the characteristics of the capacitance, dielectric constant and loss factor of all palm fruit layers decrease significantly with frequency. The loss tangent of the kernel and mesocarp layers is higher than the shell layer; meaning that both kernel and mesocarp layers can absorb radio energy and convert to heat more efficient than the shell layer. Applying the radio wave either at 13.56 or 27.12 MHz, the penetration depths of mesocarp and kernel layers are computed and found to be several times thicker than the their thickness values. This confirms that an efficient RF heating mechanism in mesocarp and kernel layers can be obtained.

Comparing Usage of Temperature Control and Composition Control for Reactive Distillation Column in Methyl Ester Production

The temperature control and the composition control for the production process was used to evaluated a method to control the quality of methyl ester production in a reactive distillation column. The optimum condition at steady state was selected as the base case condition for the control study by using Aspen Dynamic Simulation. In this work, two controller settings for PID controller of each control loop were based on the Zeigler-Nichol and the Tyreus-Luyben tuning formulae. The controllability and performance of both control structures were compared. The result shows that the control loop using the Ziegler-Nichols setting gave better control performance than the other using the Tyreus-Luyben setting. It also found that the control structure based on temperature control gives the same control performance as the other based on composition control, but less expensive and less complicated to implement.