Kinetic study of the esterification and transesterification of acid oil using sulfuric acid as catalyst.

J.M. MARCHETTI

Santiago de Chile

Congreso; XV Latin American Congress and Exhibition on Fats and Oils.; 2013

Biodiesel production is becoming more relevant due to its environmental advantages together with the global petroleum situation regarding decreases of the reserves, instability of the prices, etc. The kinetic study for the direct esterification and the transesterification of an acid oil (10 wt% of free fatty acid) was done using ethanol and sulfuric acid as catalyst. The For the study Straiweiser et al [1] mechanism was proposed for the direct esterification and Schuchard et al [2] mechanism was proposed for the transesterification reaction. The controlling step method was employed to obtain the kinetic equations and non linear multi parametric routine was implemented to estimate the kinetic parameters involved in the system. The selected reaction rate represented the experimental data for several operating conditions satisfactorily.