DETERMINATION OF KINETIC PARAMETERS FOR THE REACTIONS INVOLVED IN BIODIESEL PRODUCTION VIA OPTIMIZATION APPROACH

The search for alternative source of energy has become important as many believe that
fossil fuel is not going to last for long and it is time to change to renewable source of
energy. Biodiesel, produced from vegetable oil and alcohol commonly through the
process of transesterification has become the most reliable biofuel that is widely used
in the world today (Okullo, Temu and Ntalikwa, 2010). The reaction kinetic model
for the biodiesel has been developed in the past years with limitation of specific
reactions for each model. There is need to study and obtain generalized reaction kinetic
model that can be used for all the reactions involved in the biodiesel production. This
study is about developing general reaction kinetic model for all the reactions involved
in the biodiesel production using simulation software called MATLAB by the means of
OPTIMIZATION TOOLBOX to obtain the optimum kinetic data which will be
compared to the experimental data for accuracy. The optimized value of activation
energy and the pre-exponential factor values are general values that can be used at any
temperature to calculate the concentration of the product yield. This will enable to use the
optimized values to calculate the rate constants at any temperature. A general kinetic
model and parametric study of the kinetics of the reaction involved in the synthesis of
biodiesel developed in this project through the use of MATLAB OPTIMIZATION
TOOLBOX have shown promising results whereby it has the potential to yield the
similar set of results as compared to experimental results. Despite the increase in
concentration of glycerol and the rate constants, the methyl esters yielded at any
temperature are similar to that of experimental results with minimal error below 5 %.
The objective of this project is achieved.