Study of FAME Formation Using Porous Membrane (Hydrophilic & Hydrophobic)

FAME is short for fatty acid methyl ester, also commonly known as biodiesel. As many have been aware, the sources of fossil fuel has decreased alarmingly in the past century hence the use of biodiesel have been researched and promoted to one day, replace fossil fuels. Biodiesel has many advantages, which are reducing public dependence on foreign petroleum, substituting the limited supplies of fossil fuel, reducing greenhouse effect, air pollution and public health risk, and improving the local economy. The idea behind this project is to use a membrane tube in a reactor to selectively permeate biodiesel from the oil feedstock during transesterification process. The membrane used is a new material developed in Japan, made of Shirasu (which can be found mainly in South Kyushu). It is used as multi-functional glass because of its innumerable pores of uniform micron size that can be changed easily. Membrane reactor technology offers inherent process reliability compared to batch processes and it has several advantages over conventional reactors. Membrane reactors can integrate reaction and separation into a single process thus reducing separation costs and recycle requirements, offers enhancement of thermodynamically limited reactions resulting in higher conversions per pass, have controlled contact of incompatible reactants and eliminate undesired side reactions