EFFECT OF MILLICHANNEL REACTOR MATERIAL ON BIODIESEL PRODUCTION FROM REFINED PALM OIL

In recent years, it is known that microchannel reactor has been studied for
continuous synthesis of biodiesel. Although transesterification using micro size
reactor gives high yield and conversion, microchannel reactor generally do not
tolerate particulates well and often clogging. The clogging issue can be solved by
using different size of tube which is larger than micro-size. At present, despite all the
reported studies, there is currently no study which explore the performances of millisize
reactor on the effects of reaction parameters. Therefore, the objectives of this
study were to investigate the effects of reaction temperature, methanol to oil molar
ratio, potassium hydroxide (KOH) concentration in methanol, and residence time on
the oil conversion and fatty acid methyl ester (FAME) yield.