Lida Simasatitkul

Heat-integrated reactive distillation for biodiesel production from Jatropha oil

Abstract Minimizing the biodiesel production cost by using inexpensive and inedible feedstock like Jatropha oil is more practical as it is readily available and also not competes with edible oils. However, Jatropha oil contains high free fatty acid content, which causes operational problems in biodiesel production via alkaline-based transesterification reaction. This study aims to design a biodiesel production process from Jatropha oil. A hydrolysis reactor is applied to convert triglyceride in Jatropha oil to fatty acid. The fatty acid obtained then reacts with methanol to produce methyl ester (biodiesel product) using an esterification process. A reactive distillation is employed to intensify reaction and separation tasks for the esterification process. In order to minimize energy consumption, the heat integration of a reactive distillation process is considered. The simulation result using a flowsheet simulator indicates that the heat-integrated reactive distillation can improve the biodiesel production by minimizing the energy requirements, compared with a conventional process.

Use of reactive distillation for triacetin production from crude glycerol: Simulation and performance analysis

Abstract This study is focused on the use of crude glycerol from biodiesel production to produce triacetin via esterification reaction with acetic acid by using a reactive distillation. In general, a composition of crude glycerol consisting mostly glycerol and methanol varies with biodiesel feedstock and processes. Simulation studies are performed to investigate the effect of using crude glycerol with different fractions of methanol on triacetin production. Three process configurations are considered: (i) direct feed of crude glycerol to reactive distillation, (ii) separation of crude glycerol coupled with reactive distillation and (iii) reactive separation of crude glycerol coupled with reactive distillation.