Liquid-liquid equilibria for ternary systems containing ethyl esters, ethanol and glycerol at 323.15 and 353.15 K

The knowledge and the capacity to describe the phase equilibria of systems composed by transesterification products are very important for an adequate design and operation of biodiesel production and purification facilities. Despite their importance for the production of ethylic biodiesel, fatty acid ethyl ester + ethanol + glycerol systems have been, up to now, object of less attention than the corresponding systems formed during biodiesel production using methanol. In this work, new experimental measurements were performed for the liquid-liquid equilibria of the systems ethyl linoleate/ethyl oleate/ethyl palmitate/ethyl laurate + ethanol + glycerol at 323.15 and 333.15 K. It is shown that the Cubic-Plus-Association Equation of State (CPA EoS) can successfully predict the new experimental data with global average deviations inferior to 6%. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.