Continuous transesterification of biodiesel in a helicoidal reactor using recycled oil

The main problem with biodiesel is the high cost of oils made from oleaginous crops. For this reason, various raw materials have been analysed with a view to reducing production costs and obtaining a product that can compete with the price of petrodiesel. Recycled oil is one of the most promising alternatives in the production of biodiesel because not only is the cheapest raw material but it also avoids the expense of treating the oil as a residue. Another way to reduce costs is to make the process more economical. Conventional technology uses sodium hydroxide as the basic catalyst and large-scale batch reactors, whose mechanical agitation requires high energy consumption due to residence times of at least 60 min and temperatures of 60 degrees C. In this paper we use a recycled pretreated oil to compare conventional transesterification with continuous transesterification in a tubular reactor. In this reactor the reactants (oil, methanol and sodium hydroxide) flow through a helicoidal tube submerged in a heating bath at 60 degrees C. The reactor has five outlets distributed non-uniformly to enable samples to be taken at different reaction times. This is to reduce the reaction time and avoid the need for mechanical agitation. With the aim of improving the quality of the biodiesel obtained, we varied the helicoidal system by incorporating a static micromixer and supplying energy in the form of ultrasound from the heating bath. This reactor produced biodiesel and glycerine at compositions roughly equal to those obtained in the batch process (89% FAME content at 75 min) but did so continuously (2.5 mL/min) and just 13 min after the reactants were integrated in a single line using a T device. Both the oil and the biodiesel were characterized and analysed in accordance with European standard UNE EN14214 for biodiesel. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.