STUDY OF BIODIESEL PRODUCTION BY HETEROGENEOUS CATALYSIS USING MAGNETIC NANOPARTICLES SUPPORTED IN SILICA IN A PACKED BED REACTOR

Abstract

In this work the biodiesel production was studied through heterogeneous catalysis using SPIONs in silica. The reaction was conducted in a fixed bed reactor immersed in thermostated bath to maintain the temperature at 60 °C using 1:6:5 (soybean/methanol/tert-butanol) molar ratios between reagents and reaction times of 6,8 and 10 hours. The reactions were also conducted in Erlenmeyer incubators at Shaker under the same conditions of molar ratios and temperature, with agitation of 300 rpm, samples being withdrawn from time to time ranging from 0.25 to 8 hours. The results showed that when the reaction was conducted in a fixed bed reactor the best conversion was achieved in batch of 10 hours being equal to 3.18% and that when incubated in Shaker a conversion of 36.04% in 8 hours. In this study the kinetic constant was also determined from the experiments incubated at Shaker and proposed a transesterification process model using the ASPEN PLUS (R) process simulator.