PRODUCTION OF BIODIESEL FROM BIO OIL USING CATALYTIC REACTIVE DISTILLATION

The advantages and the properties of biodiesel over the petroleum diesel with its
conventional process are outlined. A novel process base on catalytic reactive
distillation method with presence of metal oxides as heterogeneous catalyst is
proposed to improve the performance of conventional method. Since bio-oil has poor
volatility, high viscosity, coking and corrosiveness characteristic, it is suggested to
upgrade the bio-oil. Biodiesel is one of the types for upgraded bio-oil that can be
used as a green fuel. Esters from bio-oil can he converted into hiodiesel through
esterfication I trans-esterification process by mixing hio-oil and alcohol together with
presence of catalyst.
Conversion, yield and selectivity of hiodiesel from hio-oil using reactive distillation
approach are investigated. Selected reaction parameters were optimized, using
Taguchi L9 Orthogonal Array method for design of experiments, to yield the lowest
free fatty acid content in the tina! product. The investigated parameters include
alcohol to hio-oil ratio, temperature and amount of catalyst. The etlect and
significance of each parameter were then studied and verified by additional
experiments ..
Optimum conditions for the reaction were established and effect of each variable was
investigated. The optimum conditions tor base transesteritication which could reduce
the tree fatty acid content in the feedstock were at temperature of 90"C with
butanol/bio-oil ratio of 3: I and CaO at 2wt% (reactant basis). The conversion of
butyl ester (hiodiesel) was completed atier I 0 minutes with yield of 65.35% and the
product quality was compared to the conventional petroleum diesel. Besides.
conversion and yield produced between solid base catalyst (CaO) and acid catalyst
(lhS04) were also compared.