Kinetic study of the esterification of free fatty acid and ethanol in the presence of triglycerides using solid resins as catalyst

P. JASEN; J. MARCHETTI

International Journal of Low-Carbon Technologies

2012 Oxford University Press

Lugar: Oxford; Año: 2012 vol. 0 p. 1 - 6

1748-1325

Biodiesel production is gaining more and more relevance due to its environmental advantages and because of the petroleum world situation: decreases of the reserves, augmentation of the prices, etc. Biodiesel is produced by transesterification of triglycerides; however, it can also be generated by the esterification of fatty acid, normally considered an impurity. The evolution of the reaction when using oleic acid (diluted in triglycerides) and ethanol, in the presence of an heterogeneous catalyst has been studied. Kinetics expression for the esterification reaction as well as for the esterification and transesterification taking place simultaneously have been developed and fit with the experimental data. It is shown that when both reactions as being taking into account, the kinetics fits better the experimental data since it does considered the interaction between all the compounds involved. The kinetics expression obtained represented satisfactorily the experimental information for several operations conditions.