Process simulation of glycerol production from corn oil via transesterification

Abstract

Glycerol is widely use in the production of cosmetics, solvents for drugs, and lubricants. Glycerol can be obtained as by-product of biodiesel production from vegetable oils through the transesterification process. One of the vegetable oils with abundant raw material availability in Indonesia is corn oil. Each vegetable oil generally consists of triglycerides and free fatty acids (FFA) with different composition. The triglycerides in corn oil is round 95.59% (mostly trilinoleate and triolein), the rest are FFA (2.51%), phospholipid and phytosterol. The simulation process was designed using Aspen Hysys version 8.8. The corn oil composition was simulated as 54.30% trilinoleate, 41.35% triolein, and 3.85% oleic acid (FFA). The mole ratio of corn oil: methanol was set to 1: 20. The transesterification process was simulated using conversion reactor with conversion 98% at temperature 60°C and atmospheric. The process was followed with methanol recovery and glycerol separation from biodiesel. From the process around 99.04% of excessed methanol was recovered. Glycerol and biodiesel were separated using membrane. The simulation indicates that 100 kg/h corn oil can have converted into 101.1 kg/h green diesel and 10.41 kg/h glycerol with purity 99.85%.