PHASE TRANSITIONS IN A BIODIESEL REACTOR USING SUPERCRITICAL METHANOL

PABLO HEGEL; GUILLERMO MABE; SELVA PEREDA; ESTEBAN A. BRIGNOLE

INDUSTRIAL & ENGINEERING CHEMICAL RESEARCH

American Chemical Society

Lugar: Washington; Año: 2007 vol. 46 p. 6360 - 6365

0888-5885

Recent experimental studies on non-catalytic transesterification, have shown that high reaction rates, which justify the commercial application of this process, can be obtained if the operating conditions are above the critical pressure and temperature of methanol. Even though it is generally agreed that temperatures above 550 K and high methanol/oil ratios are required to obtain high conversions and high reaction rates, there is disagreement among the different authors regarding the operating pressure, the assumed phase conditions, the use of co solvents and the justification of the sudden increase of rate of reaction with temperature. In the present work, the reactor phase transitions are directly observed in a double window cylindrical reactor and the conversion in methyl esters is measured. From direct observations and the modeling of the phase behavior, a better understanding of the supercritical methanol transesterification process is obtained.