Continuous biodiesel production in a fixed bed reactor packed with anion-exchange resin as heterogeneous catalyst

A continuous biodiesel production from the transesterification of soybean oil with methanol was investigated in a fixed bed reactor packed with D261 anion-exchange resin as a heterogeneous catalyst. The conversion to biodiesel achieved 95.2% within a residence time 56 min under the conditions: reaction temperature of 323.15 K, n-hexane/soybean oil weight rate of 0.5, methanol/soybean oil molar ratio of 9:1 and feed flow rate of 1.2 ml/min. The resin can be regenerated in-situ and restored to the original activity to achieve continuous production after the resin deactivation. The product obtained was mainly composed of methyl esters. No glycerol in the product was detected due to the resin adsorbing glycerol in the fixed bed, which solved the issue of glycerol separation from biodiesel. It is believed that the fixed bed reactor with D261 has a potential commercial application in the transesterification of triglyceride.

► A continuous transesterification with a high conversion implemented in a fixed bed reactor.
► D261 anion exchange resin as catalyst with high catalytic activity for transesterification.
► An in-situ regeneration procedure of the anion exchange resin as catalyst was adopted.
► The biodiesel containing no trace of glycerol was directly obtained.