2017 Volume 96 Issue 10 Pages 430-435
Based on the principle of nitrogen gas stripping for the residual methanol removal from crude biodiesel fuel (BDF) that we reported previously (Yamane et al., Eur. J. Lipid Sci. Technol., 115, 1183-1192 (2013)), two scaled gas stripping setups whose working volume were 5 L and 25 L were constructed to study its scale-up. As a scale-up index, (flow rate of nitrogen gas)/(volume of crude BDF), Q/V, gave the best correlation among the three indices, i.e. Q/V, Pg/V (= energy consumption of gas pump for gas stripping)/(volume of crude BDF), and u (= linear gas velocity = Q/(cross-sectional area)). The three items, i.e. Pa, Pg, and Pb, composed of the total energy consumption, Ptotal, of the two gas stripping setups were measured. Ptotal/V was approximately 0.1 [kWh/L] when Q/V was 1.5 [1/min] in 25 L-scaled gas stripping setup. As the simplest as well as inexpensive purification process, the purification process composed of the intensive residual methanol removal by a nitrogen gas stripping system followed by filtration with aid of appropriate filter aid was proposed.
