The Acceleration of Phase Separation by Phase Inversion Transesterification in Alkali-Catalyzed Biodiesel Production

Abstract

Conventional alkali-catalyzed BDF production processes have a serious problem because the settling of liquid dispersions after transesterification is slow and requires almost one day. The present study suggests a significant improvement using a simple method called PITE, i.e., strong agitation during transesterification in a fully baffled stirring vessel. The PITE method can invert the dispersions from an alcohol-in-oil (A/O) to an O/A type which settles within 20 seconds. The transesterification reaction immediately reaches its equilibrium after phase inversion, in which the reaction time is less than 2 min. It is estimated from this result that conventional batch-wise BDF production using a 100 L vessel can be replaced by an equivalent continuous operation with a 0.15 L vessel.