Continuous Process of Reactive Distillation to Produce Bio-additive Triacetin From Glycerol

Abstract

Glycerol as byproduct of biodiesel production is a very promising low-cost feedstock for producing a wide variety of special and fine chemicals. This great amount of glycerol needs to be converted into higher valuable products. One of glycerol's derivatives potential is triacetin, a good bio-additive as anti-knocking agent. In previous work triacetin synthesis from glycerol and acetic acid using sulfuric acid catalyst has been conducted in batch and continuous process. In this work, triacetin was synthesized using reactive distillation. The continuous process has 98.50% of glycerol conversion with 8.98% of triacetin selectivity.