In order to enable a comprehensive computer-aided process
analysis of an industrial biodiesel production process based
on waste cooking oils, a step-by-step procedure considering
lab-scale experiments and determination of important model
parameters is provided. In the first series of experiments a catalyst screening is performed to identify a suitable catalyst for
a reactive distillation process. It is found that the homogenous
catalyst sulphuric acid outperform the heterogeneous catalyst
Amberlyst®
15. To develop a reliable kinetic model the influence of the amount of sulphuric acid, the reactant ratio and the
reaction temperature on the reaction rate and the chemical
equilibrium are investigated experimentally. The results are
used to fit the parameters of the kinetic model, which considers an activity based approach of second order. The developed
kinetic model is validated against own experimental data and
it is shown that the simulated data are in good agreement
with the experimental results. Hence, the kinetic model can
be used in the following works incorporating the development
of a reactive distillation model, to enable process analysis and
design of a biodiesel production process using waste cooking
oils or other low-quality oils as raw material