การผลิตไบโอดีเซลจากน้ำมันปาล์มในเอทานอลภาวะเหนือวิกฤตและกึ่งวิกฤตด้วยตัวเร่งปฏิกิริยาวิวิธพันธุ์ในเครื่องปฏิกรณ์เบดนิ่ง / พรนิชา เทศวิรัช = Production of biodiesel from palm oil in supercritical and subcritical ethanol with heterogeneous catalysts in fixed bed reactor / Pornicha Tejvirat
This work studied on biodiesel production from refined palm oil in supercritical and subcritical ethanol with heterogeneous catalysts in fixed bed reactor to determine effects of operating conditions on ethyl ester content. Those operating conditions included reaction temperature, reaction pressure, total flow rate, molar ratio of ethanol to oil, type and amount of catalysts. In addition, catalyst stability and regeneration were studied. The experiments were designed by using a central composite design (CCD) and the results were analyzed by a statistical process. The minimum-maximum levels of each operating condition are as follows: reaction temperature of 240-280 °C, reaction pressure of 8-20 MPa, total flow rate of 2-4 g/min and molar ratio of ethanol to oil of 18-30:1, when 20 g of CaO/Al₂O₃ was used as the catalyst. The results show that the highest ethyl ester content of 97.4 wt.% was obtained over CaO/Al₂O₃ at the reaction temperature of 284 °C, reaction pressure of 20.8 MPa, total flow rate of 2.01 g/min and molar ratio of ethanol to oil of 30:1. The CaO/Al₂O₃ catalyst continuously maintained the ethyl ester content of 94-97 wt.% over 15 h. At the suitable conditions, the activity of the catalysts with different metals can be ordered as follows: CaO/Al₂O₃ = La₂O₃/Al₂O₃ > ZnO/Al₂O₃.