Influência do leito de inertes em reator tubular para produção de biodiesel a partir de óleo de soja e etanol supercrítico

Abstract

From the limitations of energy sources, mostly oil derivatives, biodiesel, traditionally produced comes with well-established routes of production such as the transesterification, using conventional heating and homogeneous catalysis. In the search for new technologies in the production of biodiesel, the methods that use alcohol in supercritical conditions have been widely investigated. The importance of continuous operation has taken to some studies of biodiesel production in supercritical method using tubular reactors. The following project has aims to investigate the use of inert (glass) in a tubular bed reactor for the production of biodiesel from soybean oil with pressurized. The effects of the temperature (300, 350 and 400°C), the volumetric flow rate of the reagents (0,5 and 1 mL/min), bed porosity (0.42, 0.38 and 0.32) under the conditions of 15 MPa and molar ratio oil: ethanol 1:40 on the esters conversion of the reaction were analyzed. In addition, the effect of the oil: ethanol molar ratio was analyzed, and for this, experimental runs were conducted at 350°C, 15 MPa and porosity of 0.38 at flow rates of 0.3; 0.5; and 1 mL/min, in different molar ratios (1:10 - 1:70). In general, the results indicated a positive effect of temperature on the ester content, due to the higher solubility of the oil in the alcohol under these conditions. Another interesting result was the combined effect of flow rate and porosity on residence time, maximizing the mass transfer and the miscibility between the phases, allowing the advance of the reaction at low times. The best result (98.99%) were achieved after 8 min of reaction under the conditions of 400°C, 15 MPa, molar ratio soybean oil: ethanol 1:40, flow rate of 0.5 mL/min, and porosity of 0.32.