Issue
Korean Journal of Chemical Engineering,
Vol.31, No.12, 2170-2176, 2014
Pork lard conversion to biodiesel using a microchannel reactor
Biodiesel was synthesized from pork lard via transesterification using a microchannel reactor. To investigate the effects of operating parameters, including reaction temperature (55-65 ℃), residence time (5-20 s), methanol-to-oil molar ratio (4.5 : 1 to 9 : 1), and catalyst concentration (0.7-1.3 wt%), a series of full factorial experiments with a complete replicate were conducted. Results were statistically analyzed using MINITAB with the significance level of 0.05. A quadratic model was proposed for the prediction of %FAME from the specified operating conditions. High %FAME was obtained at low residence time due to the small size of droplets in the microchannel reactor. Evidence of droplets supported the presence of mass transfer limitation in this system. The optimal operating conditions provided %FAME of 95.41% were as follows: methanol-to-oil ratio of 6 : 1, temperature of 65 ℃, residence time of 5 s, and KOH concentration of 1.3%w/w.