Transesterification of Triolein with Methanol in Reactive Distillation Column: Simulation Studies

Biodiesel is one of the most famous alternative petroleum diesel fuels. It is a clean fuel that causes less pollution than petroleum diesel does. To produce biodiesel by the conventional process, a biodiesel plant requires at least a reactor and a distillation column. Therefore, this work focuses on a feasibility study of using reactive distillation (RD), the combination of a reactor with a distillation column in one unit, to produce biodiesel from palm oil. The hypothesis of using RD is to reduce the amount of excess alcohol in the feed stream bringing its stoichiometric ratio close to that of oil. That causes less energy to be required for the methanol recovery process. Aspen Plus 2006 has been used to simulate this process. The kinetic constants of the conventional process need to be modified for the RD process. The preliminary results show a 4:1 molar ratio of methanol to oil, and the reboiler temperature at 150 degrees C produces a 97.36 %(wt) methyl ester in 5.6 minutes. It can be concluded that using the RD process is more efficient and more feasible than using the conventional process to produce biodiesel from palm oil.