Modelling and Simulation of Flow Behavior through Millichannel Reactor for Biodiesel Production Using CFD

This paper describes the numerical study of the fluid flow behavior at the inlet of millichannel reactor for biodiesel production. A computer simulation study was conducted to understand the behavior of the fluid flow in different parameters; velocity and pressure inside the millichannel reactor using Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD)-ANSYS Fluent software. Palm oil and methanol are fed into a small
channel reactor where the diameter is 1.62mm with length of 1000mm. The mixture of the feed is reacted with Potassium Hydroxide as the catalyst through transesterification method. The results show when the inlet velocity is varied, there were significant changes happened to the fluid flow behavior. While, when outlet pressure is varied, there were no significant changes observed. From the results analysis, it can be used for finding an optimal design for biodiesel production.