Numerical Simulation of Biodiesel Synthesis in T- Channel Microreactor

Abstract

Biodiesel promising as an alternative to the diesel. The transesterification reaction process involved the reaction of triglyceride with alcohol in the presence of catalyst. In the research, the Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) method was used to simulate the transesterification reaction process. The inlet pressure range from 0.0001 Pa to 0.01 Pa, temperature of 25°C, 50°C, 75°C and the molar ratio at 6:1, 9:1 were used to investigate their effect of toward the biodiesel conversion. Finding shows that high conversion of biodiesel occurred at low inlet pressure of 0.001 Pa with temperature of 50°C and the ethanol to oil molar ratio at 9:1.