Heat-integrated reactive distillation process for synthesis of fatty esters

摘要: Abstract Catalytic reactive distillation (RD) offers novel opportunities for manufacturing fatty acid alkyl esters involved in specialty chemicals and at a larger scale biodiesel. The integration of reaction separation into one RD unit, corroborated with the use heterogeneous catalyst, provides major benefits such as low capital investment operating costs. This work presents heat-integrated process based on that aims to reduce furthermore energy requirements biodiesel production, leading competitive Despite high degree integration, is well controllable using an efficient control structure proposed this work. Rigorous simulations embedding experimental results were performed computer aided engineering tools, AspenTech Aspen Plus Dynamics. column was simulated rigorous RADFRAC unit RateSep (rate-based) model, explicitly considering three phase balances. Steady-state dynamic simulation are given plant producing 10 ktpy methyl (FAME) from methanol waste vegetable oil free acids (FFA) content, sulfated zirconia green catalyst. eliminates all conventional catalyst related operations, efficiently uses raw materials reactor volume offering complete conversion allowing significant savings. Remarkably, compared previously reported processes, about 45% lower – only 108.8 kW h/ton while cost remains same no additional equipment required.