Modeling of a membrane reactor system for crude palm oil transesterification. Part II: Transport phenomena

Abstract

The mechanistic modeling of biodiesel production process in membrane reactor with the consideration of chemical reaction, phase equilibrium, and ultrafiltration is important for the membrane reactor design. In part II of this work, the chemical and phase equilibrium (CPE) model for crude palm oil transesterification reaction in the membrane reactor developed in part I is extended to an integration of CPE with modified Maxwell-Stefan model, which considers multicomponent mass transport phenomena of concentration polarization and intramembrane. A good fit of simulated permeate fluxes and apparent solute rejection to the experimental data shows that the model has a good prediction capability. Reversible fouling was found to be the major fouling and no pore plugging was observed. Simulation results verified that micelles were retained by the membrane at CPO:MEOH molar ratio of 1:24 and catalyst concentration of 0.5 wt %. However, phase inversion happened when catalyst concentration of 0.05 and 0.1 wt % were used.

Mini Review of Biodiesel by Integrated Membrane Separation Technologies That Enhanced Esterification/Transesterification

“…Chong et al and Oh et al , combined thermodynamics and reaction kinetics with a modified Stefan–Maxwell mass transfer model. On the basis of the research of chemical balance, phase equilibrium, and mass balance, they also established an esterification model that successfully predicted the phase separation of the reaction system and the concentration of each ingredient in the penetrating fluid.…”

Role of bioenergy, biorefinery and bioeconomy in sustainable development: Strategic pathways for Malaysia

“…The multiphase transesterification reaction suffers from mass transfer limitations. Various researchers have investigated intensification of biodiesel reactor for increasing area to volume ratio and overcoming mass transfer limitations, such as heterogeneously catalyzed reactor [54], oscillatory baffled reactor [55][56][57], micro-structured reactor [58], membrane reactor [59,60] and simulated moving bed reactor (SMBR) [61]. Dynamic multi-scale simulation and computational fluid dynamics methods have been used to optimize process and product performances.…”

Modeling of a membrane reactor system for crude palm oil transesterification. Part I: Chemical and phase equilibrium

“…8 The k 0 i can be calculated from the reaction kinetic data of CPO transesterification reaction in the membrane reactor. 9 The CPE model was fitted with the experimental data using the genetic algorithm (GA) as the optimization tool of MATLAB.…”

“…8 Furthermore, kinetic rate constants were obtained from our previous work, which studies the kinetic modeling for CPO transesterification reaction in the membrane reactor. 9 With these parameters, this article presents a study of CPE of CPO transesterification system in the membrane reactor based on the model developed to reconcile the simultaneous effects of reaction and phase equilibrium, and the CPE model was then evaluated by comparing the model prediction results with the experimental data.…”