Karacan S., Karacan F., 2014, Simulation of Reactive Distillation Column for Biodiesel Production at Optimum Conditions, Chemical Engineering Transactions, 39, 1705-1710.
Biodiesel is defined as a mixture of fatty acid alkyl esters which are commonly produced from triglycerides and alcohol through transesterification reaction in the presence of alkali catalysts. In this work canola oil and methanol were used in this research as the feedstocks, and potassium hydroxide, potassium methoxide, were used as different formulations of catalysts. A laboratory-scale continuous-flow Reactive Distillation column system was simulated at optimum conditions by Aspen HYSYS. The homogeneous alkali and acid catalyzed was applied to the system. The non-catalytic reaction, where the absence of catalyst simplifies the purification procedures and the products can be easily separated. The critical operating conditions and high consumption of methanol and energy make it uneconomical. Based on the optimization of energy integration and methanol recovery strategies, optimization strategies were assessed for saving energy and recovery methanol.
