Article ID | Journal | Published Year | Pages | File Type |
---|---|---|---|---|
6586205 | Chemical Engineering Journal | 2015 | 6 Pages |
Abstract
To minimize the use of volatile organic solvents in biodiesel preparation, a deep eutectic solvent (DES) consisting of choline chloride and glycerol (1:2Â M ratio) was prepared and used as the co-solvent for transesterification of rapeseed oil to biodiesel catalyzed by sodium hydroxide. This eutectic solvent is inexpensive, biodegradable and non-toxic; therefore, it is a benign solvent when comparing with volatile and usually toxic organic solvents. To optimize the yield of fatty acid methyl ester (FAME), response surface methodology (RSM) and Box-Behnken Design (BBD) were employed to evaluate several key reaction parameters such as methanol/oil molar ratio, catalyst concentration and DES concentration. This study suggests that up to 98% FAME yields could be obtained at optimum conditions of 6.95 methanol/oil molar ratio, 1.34Â wt% catalyst concentration and 9.27Â wt% DES concentration. Data analysis and verification results further confirmed the suitability of BBD and RSM methods for optimizing the NaOH-catalyzed biodiesel synthesis. In comparison with the reaction without DES, the addition of DES in the transesterification reaction substantially improved the FAME yield, reduced the side reactions (such as saponification), and enabled a straightforward biodiesel separation and purification.
Related Topics
Physical Sciences and Engineering
Chemical Engineering
Chemical Engineering (General)
Authors
Ling Gu, Wei Huang, Shaokun Tang, Songjiang Tian, Xiangwen Zhang,