Document Type : Full article

Authors

CFD Research Center, Chemical Engineering Department, Razi University, Kermanshah, Iran

Abstract

In the present study, Choline hydroxide (ChOH) as an ionic liquid catalyst was used for transesterification of soybean oil into biodiesel in a microchannel reactor. The effects of three variables i.e. reaction temperature, catalyst dosage and total flow rate on fatty acid methyl ester (FAME) content (wt. %) were optimized using Box–Behnken experimental design. In order to predict the FAME content a quadratic polynomial model was obtained. The optimal conditions from the model were reaction temperature of 53.53 °C, catalyst dosage of 2.6 wt. % and total flow rate of 11.82 mL/min. At these conditions, the predicted FAME content was 96.45 wt.% and the experimental FAME content was obtained 97.6 wt. %. The proximity of the experimental results and predicted values showed that the regression model issignificant. Using the ionic liquid catalyst in the studied microreactor for transesterification leads to diminish the reaction time to the order of seconds compared to conventional batch systems. In addition, the reusability of ChOH catalyst was investigated. The results revealed that the catalyst had perfect utility after several runs without much loss in the activity.

Keywords

Main Subjects

[1]      Di Serio, M., Tesser, R., Pengmei, L. and Santacesaria, E., “Heterogeneous catalysts for biodiesel production”, Energy Fuels, 22 (1), 207 (2007).
[2]      Kwon, E. E., Jeon, E.,-C., Yi, H. and Kim, S., “Transforming duck tallow into biodiesel via noncatalytic transesterification”, Appl. Energy, 116, 20 (2014).
[3]      Wu, Q., Chen, H., Han, M., Wang, D. and Wang, J., “Transesterification of cottonseed oil catalyzed by Brønsted acidic ionic liquids”, Ind. Eng. Chem. Res., 46 (24), 7955 (2007).
[4]      Antolın, G., Tinaut, F., Briceno, Y., Castano, V., Perez, C. and Ramırez, A., “Optimisation of biodiesel production by sunflower oil transesterification”, Bioresour. Technol., 83 (2), 111 (2002).
[5]      Forbes, D. C., Law, A. M. and Morrison, D. W., “The Knoevenagel reaction: Analysis and recycling of the ionic liquid medium”, Tetrahedron Lett., 47 (11), 1699 (2006).
[6]      Li, Z., Jia, Z., Luan, Y. and Mu, T., “Ionic liquids for synthesis of inorganic nanomaterials”, Curr. Opin. Solid State Mater. Sci., 12 (1), 1 (2008).
[7]      Fang, D., Yang, J. and Jiao, C., “Dicationic ionic liquids as environmentally benign catalysts for biodiesel synthesis”, ACS Catal., 1 (1), 42 (2010).
[8]      Han, M., Yi, W., Wu, Q., Liu, Y., Hong, Y. and Wang, D., “Preparation of biodiesel from waste oils catalyzed by a Brønsted acidic ionic liquid”, Bioresour. Technol., 100 (7), 2308 (2009).
[9]      Zhang, L., Xian, M., He, Y., Li, L., Yang, J., Yu, S. and Xu, X., “A Brønsted acidic ionic liquid as an efficient and environmentally benign catalyst for biodiesel synthesis from free fatty acids and alcohols”, Bioresour. Technol., 100 (19), 4368 (2009).
[10]  Liang, X., Gong, G., Wu, H. and Yang, J., “Highly efficient procedure for the synthesis of biodiesel from soybean oil using chloroaluminate ionic liquid as catalyst”, Fuel, 88 (4), 613 (2009).
[11]  Elsheikh, Y., Man, Z., Bustam, M. A., Yusup, S. and Wilfred, C., “Brønsted imidazolium ionic liquids: Synthesis and comparison of their catalytic activities as pre-catalyst for biodiesel production through two stage process”, Energy Convers. Manage., 52 (2), 804 (2011).
[12]  Yassin, F. A., El Kady, F. Y., Ahmed, H. S., Mohamed, L. K., Shaban, S. A. and Elfadaly, A. K., “Highly effective ionic liquids for biodiesel production from waste vegetable oils”, Egypt. J. Pet., 24 (1), 103 (2015).
[13]  Ullah, Z., Bustam, M. A. and Man, Z., “Biodiesel production from waste cooking oil by acidic ionic liquid as a catalyst”, Renew. Energy, 77, 521 (2015).
[14]  Maymandi, M. G. and Rahimpour, F., “Optimization of lipid productivity by Citrobacter youngae CECT 5335 and biodiesel preparation using ionic liquid catalyst”, Fuel, 159, 476 (2015)..
[15]  Reddy, E. R., Sharma, M., Chaudhary, J. P., Bosamiya, H. and Meena, R., “One-pot synthesis of biodiesel from high fatty acid Jatropha curcas oil using bio-based basic ionic liquid as a catalyst”, Curr. Sci., 106 (10), 1394 (2014).
[16]  Fan, M., Huang, J., Yang, J. and Zhang, P., “Biodiesel production by transesterification catalyzed by an efficient choline ionic liquid catalyst”, Appl. Energy, 108, 333 (2013).
[17]  Liu, C. -Z., Wang, F., Stiles, A. R. and Guo, C., “Ionic liquids for biofuel production: Opportunities and challenges”, Appl. Energy, 92, 406 (2012).
[18]  Jähnisch, K., Hessel, V., Löwe, H. and Baerns, M., “Chemistry in microstructured reactors”, Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., 43 (4), 406 (2004).
[19]  Guan, G., Kusakabe, K., Moriyama, K. and Sakurai, N., “Transesterification of sunflower oil with methanol in a microtube reactor”, Ind. Eng. Chem. Res., 48 (3), 1357 (2009).
[20]  Wen, Z., Yu, X., Tu, S .-T., Yan, J. and Dahlquist, E., “Intensification of biodiesel synthesis using zigzag micro-channel reactors”, Bioresour. Technol., 100 (12), 3054 (2009).
[21]  Sun, P., Wang, B., Yao, J., Zhang, L. and Xu, N., “Fast synthesis of biodiesel at high throughput in microstructured reactors”, Ind. Eng. Chem. Res., 49 (3), 1259 (2009).
[22]  Tanawannapong, Y., Kaewchada, A. and Jaree, A., “Biodiesel production from waste cooking oil in a microtube reactor”, J. Ind. Eng. Chem., 19 (1), 37 (2013).
[23]  Azam, N. A. M., Uemura, Y., Kusakabe, K. and Bustam, M. A., “Biodiesel production from palm oil using micro tube reactors: Effects of catalyst concentration and residence time”, Procedia Eng., 148, 354 (2016).
[24]   Rahimi, M., Aghel, B., Alitabar, M., Sepahvand, A. and Ghasempour, H. R., “Optimization of biodiesel production from soybean oil in a microreactor”, Energy Convers. Manage., 79, 599 (2014).
[25]  Basiri, M., Rahimi, M. and Mohammadi, F., “Investigation of liquid–liquid two-phase flow pattern in microreactors for biodiesel production”, IJChE, 12 (3), 32 (2015).
[26]  Wang, Y., Ou, S., Liu, P., Xue, F. and Tang, S., “Comparison of two different processes to synthesize biodiesel by waste cooking oil”, J. Mol. Catal. A: Chem., 252 (1), 107 (2006).
[27]  Leung, D. Y., Wu, X. and Leung, M., “A review on biodiesel production using catalyzed transesterification”, Appl. Energy, 87 (4), 1083 (2010).
[28]  Dai, J. -Y., Li, D. -Y., Zhao, Y. -C. and Xiu, Z. -L., “Statistical optimization for biodiesel production from soybean oil in a microchannel reactor”, Ind. Eng. Chem. Res., 53 (22), 9325 (2014).
[29]   Malsch, D., Kielpinski, M., Merthan, R., Albert, J., Mayer, G., Köhler, J., Süße, H., Stahl, M. and Henkel, T., “μPIV-analysis of Taylor flow in micro channels”, Chem. Eng. J., 135, S166 (2008).