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1. 1. Biodiesel production from palm oil in
minichannel reactor
By:
Wan Norita Wan Ab Rashid1, Yoshimitsu Uemura1, a, Katsuki Kusakabe3,
Noridah Osman1, and Bawadi Abdullah2

2. ABSTRACT
 Transesterification of palm oil using methanol.
 Catalyst used is KOH.
 Minichannel reactor used is made up of TEFLON.
 Temperature maintained at 60 o C.
 Residence time is changed by changing length of tube.
 Relation between ester content and flow pattern are investigated.

3. INTRODUCTION
As there is a lot of demand of fuel for the high population. Fossil fuel are depleting
rapidly and pollution level are also incising. A day will come when there will be
necessity of alternating fuel. Biodiesel is one of the best option now a day. Biodiesel is
commonly produced by esterification of oil using methanol and KOH. Triglyceride
react with methanol to form Fatty acid methyl ester (FAME). Biodiesel produced from
this process are similar to the petroleum diesel.
CH2OCOR1 KOH CH3OCOR1 CH2OH
CH2OCOR2 + 3CH3OH CH3OCOR2 + CH2OH
CH2OCOR3 CH3OCOR3 CH2OH

4. The source of biodiesel feed stock are seeds of sunflower, rubber, soybean, kernel,
palm etc . Feed stocks are chosen according to avlaibality and abundance of seeds
in that region. Study of biodiesel production in continuous minichannel reactor is
widely studied. There are a lot of key factor that affect the production of biodiesel
in continuous reactor ie oil to methanol ratio, catalyst %, diameter and length of
tube, residence time etc.

5. EXPERIMENTAL SETUP
a) Transesterification :
 Take methanol, acetic acid, KOH and from chemical shop.
Take palm oil from market and do characterization of basic properties of palm oil.
Properties values
Acid value(mg KOH/g) 0.37
Saponification value(mg KOH/g) 200
Average molecular weight(g/mol) 840.71
Water content(mg/L) 549
Density (kg/m3) 587(at 25oC)
Viscosity (mPa.S) 60.04(at 25oC)

6. Take minichannel reactor made up of Teflon tube having inner diameter 1.59mm,
syringe pump, T-shaped joint.

7. CONCLUSION
 At 60 0C and residence time 69s we get conversion of more than 80%
 Different flow pattern affect the ester content.
 4 wt% of potassium hydroxide is sufficient to obtain high ester content.

8. 2. Optimization of biodiesel production from soybean oil in a
microreactor
By:
Masoud Rahimi, Babak Aghel a, Mohammad Alitabar b, Arash Sepahvand b, Hamid
Reza Ghasempour(2014)

9. Experimental setup
• Transesterification of soybean oil with methanol in the presence of potassium
hydroxide, as a catalyst, in a microreactor.
• Circular tubes with hydraulic diameter of (0.8 mm).
• Temperature (55–65 0C)
• catalyst concentration (0.6–1.8 wt.%)
• Residence time (20–180 s)

11. Operating condiction
Influence of :-
• Effect of molar ratio of methanol to oil.
• Effect of reaction temperature.
• Effect of catalyst concentration.
• Effect of the flow rate and the residence time under optimal
conditions

12. Result and conclusion
• Based on transesterification reaction of oil, the stoichiometric molar ratio
of methanol to oil is 3 to 1. However, transesterification reaction cannot be
completed in this ratio and higher molar ratio should be used to force the
reaction to be completed.
• It should be pointed out that at low temperature, the reaction rate was
slow and with increasing temperature, the percentage of methyl esters
remarkably increased. It was found that the maximum percentage of
methyl esters for soybean oil using KOH was obtained at 60 C
• the temperature of reaction is higher than the boiling point of methanol in
laboratory pressure condition, further increase in temperature to 65 C
resulted in the linearly decrease in percentage of methyl esters to 84%.
Besides, due to high content of FFA in oil, increase in reaction temperature
accelerates the glycerides saponification by the alkaline catalyst