2.2 Experimental data of reaction kinetic
Experimental data of the kinetics production of palm oil methyl esters by transesterification of crude palm oil (CPO) with methanol using alkaline catalysts in a batch reactor under different conditions (catalyst: sodium methoxide and sodium hydroxide; catalyst concentration: 0.125, 0.1875 and 0.250 mol/oil kg; reaction temperature: 50, 60 and 70ºC; ratio of oil to methanol: 1:6, 1:8, and 1:10) were taken from literature demonstrated that both catalysts (sodium methoxide and sodium
hydroxide) provide good catalytic activity for the transesterification of CPO, and that fast
formation of the methyl esters of palm oil is obtained when the reaction is performed at 60°C
with a molar ratio of methanol to oil of 01:10 and catalyst concentration of 0.125 mol
NaOH/kg oil. In virtue of this, these experimental conditions were preferably preselected for
the following development of the PPR model simulation; however, other conditions of
reaction were subsequently explored.
Based on electronic curves captured from the original pdf-type archive of Cheng et al.
(2004), pairs of experimentally measured values of time of reaction (t) and conversion of CPO
into methyl esters (xTG) were obtained from using the software Paint of Microsoft Windows
version 6.1 (2009). To illustrate, Figure 1 presents the experimental points (green symbols) for
the preselected reaction condition.
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