SIMULATION BASED DESIGN FOR THE PRODUCTION OF BIODIESEL THROUGH REACTIVE DISTILLATION

Abstract

Biodiesel is one promising alternative energy source because it is environmental friendly and is derived from domestic and renewable resources, which can be used pure or mixed without carrying out major changes in conventional engines. Feedstocks such as waste cooking oil or non-edible oil, usually contain high amount of free fatty acid (FFA).Biodiesel is usually produced with the esterification of these free fatty acids (FFA).Reactive Distillation is one of the most attractive processes to carry out esterification as it involves simultaneous of products from the reactants. To obtain an optimal design of the RD process, an accurate modelling and simulation of the process is crucial. In this work, simulation of oleic acid esterification catalyzed by Amberlyst 15 using the RD process was conducted. Oleic acid was selected as a model compound since it is one of the major components of the oil feedstock for biodiesel plants. The simulation was carried out using the Aspen Plus v7.1. Process Simulator was based on the equilibrium stage model (EQ) while the kinetic data were obtained from literature. In this simulation, sensitivity analysis was conducted to evaluate the influence of the process parameters on the reaction conversion, including the distillate rate, reflux ratio, total number of stages, number of reactive stages and feed point location.