A kinetic study of free fatty acid esterification was
carried out using Purolite D5081 as a catalyst. Esterification
reaction was carried out using 1.25% (w/w) catalyst loading, 6:1
methanol to oil feed mole ratio, 350 rpm stirring speed and
reaction temperatures ranging from 323 - 335 K. The
experimental data from the esterification reaction were fitted to
three kinetic models: Pseudo Homogeneous (PH),
Eley-Rideal(ER) and Langmuir-Hinshelwood-Hougen-Watson
(LHHW) models. A built-in ODE45 solver in MATLAB 7.0 was
used to numerically integrate the differential molar balances
describing the concentration of FFA in the system. The
influence of temperature on the kinetic constants was
determined by fitting the results to the Arrhenius equation.
Experimental data were successfully fitted by the PH model and
a good agreement between the experimental and the calculated
moles of FFA were observed for all the experimental data points.
The activation energies for the esterification and hydrolysis
reactions were found to be 53 and 107 kJ/mol, respectively.
These results proved that the hydrolysis reverse reaction
requires more energy to occur as compared to esterification
reaction, hence validated the proposed model.
Funding
We gratefully acknowledge Purolite International Ltd.(late Dr. Jim Dale and Mr. Brian Windsor) for kindly
supplying the catalysts for this research work and GreenFuel
Oil Co. Ltd. for supplying the UCO. We would like to
acknowledge UMP research grant RDU130311 for the
conference budget allocation.
History
School
Aeronautical, Automotive, Chemical and Materials Engineering
Department
Chemical Engineering
Published in
International Journal of Chemical Engineering and Applications
Volume
7
Issue
5
Pages
295 - 298
Citation
ABIDIN, S.Z., VLADISAVLJEVIC, G.T. and SAHA, B., 2016. Kinetics of free fatty acid esterification in used cooking oil using hypercrosslinked exchange resin as catalyst. International Journal of Chemical Engineering and Applications, 7 (5), pp. 295 - 298.
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Publication date
2016-10-31
Copyright date
2016
Notes
This is an open access article published in the International Journal of Chemical Engineering and Applications.